Category Archives: Political Commentary

Business, Economics, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

Payton Comes Around

20 Comments

Remember a few weeks ago, when the Ares huggers were seizing on comments by Gary Payton that cancelling Ares would double costs for the Pentagon’s solid motors? It never made any economic sense, but it was used as cudgel, however dull, in the battle over the new policy. Well now he’s saying that not only will the effect be trivial, but that it actually benefits the DoD to have more users of the EELVs:

Q. What does the cancellation of Constellation mean for the Air Force?

A. If there are increases to the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) annual launch rate, that’s a good sign. Right now, we have a plan for United Launch Alliance to do eight launches a year, notionally five for the Air Force, two for the National Reconnaissance Office and one for NASA. So if we can increase that one for NASA up to two or three per year, that would be great for everybody, because we would be buying more rocket engines per year and flying more rockets per year, and that helps with the proficiency of the launch crews…

Q. Are you concerned about the Constellation decision’s impact on the solid-rocket motor industrial base?

A. We’ve come to find out that it has a trivial impact on space launch because we don’t use the big 3½-meter segmented solids on our EELVs; we use solids that are about 1½ meters in diameter.

Well, pardon me, but DUH.

I could never understand why the Pentagon went along with Constellation in the first place.

[Via Parabolic Arc]

Mathematics, Political Commentary, Science And Society

Fact Checking The EPA

38 Comments

I was doing a little research on the mess, and wanted to get some data on the Gulf. According to the EPA, it has a volume of 642 trillion gallons. This seems off by three orders of magnitude to me (that is, I think that its 642 quadrillion gallons — 1015th, not 1012th — which is what a trillion would be).

My calculation is based on the stated area of 600,000 square miles (which seems reasonable to me), and average depth of 1600 meters (why do they have to mix their units?), which is about 5100 feet. Multiply the square miles by 5280 squared, and you get about 17 trillion square feet. So the volume has to be three orders of magnitude more than that, and it’s another order of magnitude (7.5 gallons per square foot) when you convert to gallons.

Am I off, or are they?

Yeah, I want these people to be in charge of regulating carbon emissions (including, no doubt, my exhalations).

[Update late afternoon]

Why do I care, you ask? Because people are saying that with the new estimate of the leak rate, this is the equivalent of “n” Exxon Valdezes per week, where n varies with the commentator. But the Gulf isn’t Prince William Sound. Based on the number of 11,000 square miles affected in Alaska, and an average depth of a thousand feet (generous, I think — the deepest point in sound is 2000, and most of it is a lot less, even when you get out around the Kenai Peninsula), I get a ratio of volumes of on the order of 300, so we’d need a lot of Exxon Valdezes to make it comparable to that disaster. I don’t know whether the warmer temps of the Gulf make things better, or worse, though.

Political Commentary

Is Kagen Anti-Gun?

3 Comments

Probably. I’d be pretty surprised to learn that she agreed with Heller, for instance. I have to say, I’m in no big hurry to see Stevens replaced, because any of Obama’s nominees are likely to be disastrous for decades. This was in fact the biggest reason to prefer McCain in 2008 — to prevent, or at least mitigate, such long-lasting damage to liberty.

Political Commentary

America Is A Campus

10 Comments

…and Obama is our dean. Complete with speech codes, apparently. Glenn Reynolds disagrees somewhat:

Nonsense. No Dean would rock the boat so rashly, or offend the money folks so gratuitously, or put the college into so much debt. On the other hand, Hanson hits the nail on the head in other ways.

Yes. Like the president’s credentialism hypocrisy on Kagen versus Miers. Not to mention himself.

[Early afternoon update]

Related thoughts from Jay Nordlinger:

I hope I have read that incorrectly, or am interpreting it incorrectly. Did we, the United States, talking to a government that maintains a gulag, that denies people their basic rights, that in all probability harvests organs, apologize for the new immigration law in Arizona? Really, really?

…Do you ever get the idea that our government is a bunch of left-wing undergraduates come to power?

Every day.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space

A Space Glossary

The other day, a commenter said that he thought that Constellation was just the rocket and capsule. Many people don’t know what Constellation (and other things) are, and aren’t, which is what feeds part of the ignorant hysteria that we’ve seen in the press and on the Hill since the new budget was bumblingly introduced in February (and unfortunately, the administrator remains poor on his messaging and communications capability, with his talk about “bailouts” for the commercial sector). Anyway, as a probably futile attempt to clear the fog, I have a glossary and explanation up over at PJM today.

Business, Economics, Political Commentary, Science And Society

The Global Green Meltdown

5 Comments

…gains momentum. Some thoughts on our justified loss of faith in technocrats, from Walter Russell Mead. One point I would add is that much of the green movement was and is driven by the watermelon socialists, who leaped on to it with the collapse of the Soviet Union and (temporary, unfortunately) corresponding collapse in the credibility of socialism. I’d like to think that the current mess, including the collapse of Eurosocialism, will be the final stake through its heart, but I’m afraid that we’ll have to wage this ideological battle over and over, because every generation or two, we forget what a disaster it is everywhere it’s tried, and the basic tenets are a siren’s song to human nature.

Political Commentary, Technology and Society, Weird

An Interesting Head Case

33 Comments

Alcor just won a lawsuit to allow them to disinter a body that had been buried for two years, and cryonically suspend the rotted head.

Yes, it’s pointless, as far as that patient went (as far as I’m concerned, his family murdered him), but Alcor had to do this, to assure their other customers that it would do whatever was necessary to fight for them, and fulfill its contractual responsibilities. It was also a useful reminder to obstreperous relatives that they have to obey the wishes of the deceased. What’s particularly disgusting about this is that it appears they did it for the money. I thought it seemed like chutzpah to prevent Alcor from fulfilling the contract, then demanding the money back for it.