Category Archives: Political Commentary

Economics, Political Commentary, Space

ISS Crew Research Time

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It’s even worse than we’ve been told previously:

Suffredini pointed out that ISS operations require 15-17 flights per year and “then sprinkle in EVAs, it’s hard to find time to do research.” EVA refers to extravehicular activity, or spacewalks. NASA has a goal of performing 35 hours of research per week, but the current average is 26.13 hours. He is trying to find ways to “buy back crew time” and looking forward to the era of commercial crew when the typical ISS crew complement will be seven instead of six.

This means that rather than doubling productivity, adding a crew member would increase it by a factor of two and a half. And adding two would increase it by a factor of four (assuming forty-hour weeks — not sure why NASA only has a target of thirty five, or why it’s not even higher, given that they don’t have a hell of a lot else to do up there).

As a way of plugging my upcoming book:

To get back to the bizarre (at least that’s how it would appear to a Martian) behavior with respect to ISS, what is it worth? Of what value is it to have people aboard? We have spent about a hundred billion dollars on it over almost three decades. We are continuing to spend two or three billion a year on it, depending on how one keeps the books. For that, if the purpose is research, we are getting about one person-year of such (simply maintaining the facility takes a sufficient amount of available crew time that on average, only one person is doing actual research at any given time). That would imply that we think that a person-year of orbital research is worth two or three gigabucks.

What is the constraint on crew size? For now, not volume, and not the life support system – I don’t know how many ultimately it could handle, but we know that there is not currently a larger crew because of NASA’s lifeboat requirement, and there has to be a Soyuz (which can return three) for each three people on the station. If what they were doing was really important, they’d do what they do at Scott-Amundsen, and live without. After all, as suggested earlier, just adding two researchers would immediately triple the productivity of the facility. That’s not to say that they couldn’t be continuing to improve the safety, and develop a larger life boat eventually (the Dragon is probably very close to being able to serve as one now, since it doesn’t need a launch abort system for that role), but their unwillingness to risk crew now is indicative of how unimportant whatever science being done on the station really is.

Actually, I should update the book to reflect the new numbers.

Even with the concerns about Dragon issues, I’d bet that there are plenty of people who’d be happy to trust it as a lifeboat right now, though they really should get the new docking adapter up there ASAP. That is really on the critical path to expanding capability. Of course, if they were really serious, they’d do without a lifeboat or ambulance, as Scott-Amundsen does in the winter, and just add crew. I guess Antarctic research is more important than orbital research.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, War Commentary

Obama’s Three Strikes

What we learned from yesterday’s news conference (which isn’t what the president wanted us to learn):

Add up these comments and it seems the president’s second-term foreign policy will not change at all. Never admit error, obfuscate, change the subject, talk and talk and talk, “engage,” and claim all is well. Mr. Obama noted that in Syria the situation has “deteriorated” since he demanded that Assad go — in the summer of 2011. That’s the truest thing he said: There are now 40,000 dead, 400,000 refugees, many more displaced persons, and a really dangerous jihadi presence. As Mr. Obama might say, that’s not optimal — and he remains unable to draw the connection between his own policies and those disastrous developments.

And the great thing is, we now get over four more years of it.

Business, Political Commentary, Space

A CommercialPrivate Lunar Base

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Well, this is intriguing:

…source information acquired by L2 this week revealed plans for a “game-changing” announcement as early as December that a new commercial space company intends to send commercial astronauts to the moon by 2020.

According to the information, the effort is led by a group of high profile individuals from the aerospace industry and backed by some big money and foreign investors. The company intends to use “existing or soon to be existing launch vehicles, spacecraft, upper stages, and technologies” to start their commercial manned lunar campaign.

The details point to the specific use of US vehicles, with a basic architecture to utilize multiple launches to assemble spacecraft in Low Earth Orbit (LEO). The details make direct reference to the potential use of propellant depots and fuel transfer technology.

Additional notes include a plan to park elements in lunar orbit, staging a small lunar lander that would transport two commercial astronauts to the surface for short stays.

The architecture would then grow into the company’s long-term ambitions to establish a man-tended outpost using inflatable modules. It is also understood that the company has already begun the design process for the Lunar Lander.

If this is true, it’s going to make it harder for NASA to justify SLS. Or even being in the human spaceflight business at all. We’ll soon see, perhaps. December isn’t far off.

[Update a while later]

I decided to change the post title, because it isn’t clear that this is intended as a money-making venture.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, War Commentary

Silencing Petraeus

The official government version, like the official government story on Benghazi, makes no sense:

In the modern era, office-holders with forgiving spouses simply do not resign from powerful jobs because of a temporary, non-criminal, consensual adult sexual liaison, as the history of the FDR, Eisenhower, JFK, LBJ, and Clinton presidencies attest. So, why is Petraeus different? Someone wants to silence him.

If there were national security implications to Petraeus’s affair, they existed when it remained unknown, and he wanted to keep it that way. That is when the president should have been informed as soon as Holder knew, not after he’d been outed, and was no longer blackmailable. It’s very simple, really.

But of course, I don’t believe that the president didn’t know from the get go. It’s a shame that no one asked him in the press conference yesterday when he found out.

My question: who will be the John Dean of this administration?

[Update a few minutes later]

Related thoughts from VDH:

…anyone in these circumstances would also be advised that any future testimony had the potential to be at odds with past testimonies and statements, which might argue for a darker scenario in which after the election someone in the administration felt that Petraeus could now safely resign and fade quietly into retirement — all of which makes the role of any future statements by Ms. Broadwell quite dynamic.There are all sorts of different speculations, but the above is perhaps the most generous explanation we are hearing and reading and it must be dispelled by the Congress and administration as quickly as possible. It does no good simply to cry “conspiracy theorist” when these speculations are natural and logical.

There are all sorts of important ramifications: from the proper role of the FBI stealthily examining the private e-mails of top officers, to the issue of what exactly does the FBI do with the results of these probes and who oversees its findings, to the coordination of the State Department, administration, and CIA — and of course, most importantly, the question of why and how did our government put Americans in unsafe conditions, refuse pleas for increased security, not lend assistance in extremis, and then mislead the country about the circumstances of their deaths — and why were so many Americans in Libya in the first place and what were they doing that was worth putting them in such grave danger and from whom?

For some reason, I don’t think that the White House wants us to find that out, even with the election safely behind them.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

The Discussion That’s Been Lost

This:

Memo to the New York Times, New York publishers, and other morally clueless individuals scratching their heads over the Petraeus scandal: If you are writing a biography and either you or your subject are married to a third person, and you have sex, you have done something wrong. No mystery, no dilemma, no agonizing introspection needed.

Of course, knowing what is right is the easy part. Doing it can be hard. But if you are genuinely confused about the morality of what presumably happened in this relationship, it’s time to get your moral compass reset.

The problem is that we’re not allowed moral compasses any more. It’s too judgmental.

And of course, what they did was wrong even if there was no biography involved. But we’re not supposed to talk about that, just as we’re not supposed to criticize women who have children out of wedlock. Because, you know.