A status update on the nation, and on Declaration Entertainment, now a year old.
Category Archives: Political Commentary
Orwellian
The Sixth Circuit has just struck down a civil rights initiative in Michigan. As Jon Adler notes, it’s likely to be overturned.
[Update a few minutes later]
Crazy commies. Here we have people expressing gratitude that a black cop-killer is being released, and should never have been imprisoned in the first place.
Though, I have to admit, in this case, I’m with them. And don’t forget — we’re racists.
An Open Letter To Certain Senators
…who are writing open letters to the NASA administrator.
Dear Senators Shelby, Boxer, Feinstein, Warner, Chambliss, and Murray:
Why are you only calling for competition on one particular component of the SenateSpace Launch System? It is a huge project, estimated to cost many billions of dollars. If the taxpayer would be best served by competing the side boosters, why not increase the joy by competing the entire system, including main engines, tanks, upper-stage engines, and design? Why is that only the boosters would benefit from this novel procurement approach? For that matter, why not simply have a competition for the most cost-effective proposal to get humans beyond low earth orbit, or to resupply space station, since these are the reasons that we have been given when asked about the requirements for the SLS. Of course, such a competition might result in no SLS at all, if someone can come up with a cost-effective way of meeting those goals without it, but this is about the taxpayers, right?
Most sincerely and cordially,
Rand Simberg
[Cross posted at Competitive Space]
Uh, Guys?
The supply chain is gone:
To avoid any gap in providing independent repair spacewalks as a safety contingency for the space station, Congress, NASA and the ISS partners should evaluate the option of postponing the launch of STS – 135 until more external fuel tanks and other parts can be built to support additional shuttle flights in 2012.
2012? What are they smoking?
It would be at least two years, probably three, before they could resurrect the tooling and manufacturing needed to do this, and it would cost billions of dollars that NASA does not have, and isn’t going to get. Meanwhile, we’d have thousands of workers sitting around, forgetting how to launch safely. This is just crazy, and disappointing, considering the sources. Do they really so completely lack imagination that they can’t conceive of ways to do EVA and ISS repair and maintenance with what is currently coming on line, and not relying on an unsafe hyperexpensive vehicle? This is the product of emotion, not thought.
[Update early afternoon]
I have a sort-of-related bleg. I’m working on an article about the false lessons learned from the Shuttle, and how they’re continuing to screw up space policy. Suggestions in comments are appreciated. The first and most obvious one is that it proved reusables don’t reduce cost.
Public Support For Space
With the approach of the final Shuttle launch next week, Pew has done a survey of public opinion, that shows continuing support for maintaining our “leadership” in space, whatever that means.
As is often the case with such polls, put together by people who don’t understand space policy themselves, those questioned are presented with a false choice:
Q.17 Thinking about the space program more generally, how much does the U.S. space program contribute to:
a. Scientific advances that all Americans can use
b. This country’s national pride and patriotism
c. Encouraging people’s interest in science and technology
You’d think that if they lacked imagination to come up with anything else on their own, they’d at least provide a d) Other, so they would know to think harder next time. I can think of at least two:
d. Increasing the nation’s wealth and standard of living
e. Increasing the potential for human freedom and opportunity.
I’d like to raise the money to do my own poll, that would actually be useful in guiding policy.
Force Him To Drop The Mask
Some thoughts on Republican electoral strategy:
Karl Rove’s right: The 2012 GOP nominee should “fiercely challenge Mr. Obama’s policies, actions and leadership using the president’s own words, but should stay away from questioning his motives, patriotism or character.” Still: If the GOP nominee uses good-natured humor to needle Obama’s record, then the president likely will show his bad side. And the country won’t like it.
It occurs to me that these polls showing that the public still “likes” the president, even though they disapprove of his performance, are probably overstating the former. I think that there is still some residual resistance to being accused of being racists (unsurprising, given the media climate over the past two years, in which that was the instant response from the president’s defenders, both in and out of the media, to any criticism of his policies). I’d imagine that we’re seeing some “Bradley Effect” for the presidential popularity, though they feel a little more free to speak their minds on the policies themselves.
[Update a couple minutes later]
I’d say that, after the rank hypocrisy of the AWOL president lecturing the Republican House (which has actually passed a budget) to buckle down and do their homework, this video is well deserved.
[Update late morning]
Change it back:
[Courtesy of Jeff Dobbs]
Anti-Anti-Colonialism
Most Jamaicans think they’d be better off if they were still a British colony.
No kidding. Decolonialization, particularly for the British Empire, was a disaster for most of the former colonies, particularly in Africa (of which Haiti is a bit of, in the western hemisphere).
The Ground Continues To Shift
For years, since its founding in the wake of the Challenger disaster by June Scobee (not June Scobee Rogers), widow of perished commander Dick Scobee, the Challenger Center has been a strong defender of the Shuttle program and traditional NASA human spaceflight. So this press release supporting commercial human spaceflight is sort of a big deal (or as the vice president would say, a BFD), I think. At some point (and particularly if we can get a new president, and people have forgotten that it was Obama who came up with the new direction), the only supporters of the Senate Launch System will be those who benefit from the pork. Most others who are truly interested in actual space accomplishment will see it for what it is.
[Update late morning]
It’s nice to see Bolden standing up for sanity at the National Press Club:
Bolden: ‘When I hear ppl say last shuttle launch marks end of human space flight, I say u must B living on another planet.
We’ve been getting lots of dispatches from other planets over the past year and a half.
The War Against “Liberalism”
What’s next? A symposium.
One of the major battles should be to take the word back from the leftists.
Is The Space Age Over?
The Economist seems to think so. More thoughts later.
[Friday morning update]
Clark Lindsey has a good comment over at their web site:
The author uses the cheap-shot pejorative “Space Cadet” to demean those in favor of space travel. So I will use “Earth Child” to characterize the author’s parochial one planet view.
Go read all, as he takes Earth Child to task. A lot of the other comments there are also pretty critical and disdainful.
[Bumped]
[Update a few minutes later]
More comments over at NASA Watch.