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Category Archives: Political Commentary
Twenty-Four Years Ago
It was my birthday, and the Challenger was destroyed. I have some remembrances of the event, originally posted eight years ago. That was the beginning of the end of the Shuttle program, less than five years after it started flying, though we didn’t necessarily realize it at the time. It was certainly the end of the fantasy that it was going to fly many times a year, and do everything for everyone. In that respect, it was a necessary wake-up call, and it provided the basis for today’s commercial launch industry.
[Mid-morning update]
A lot of memories over at Free Republic.
I don’t recall being as emotionally devastated as many report being, but I think that’s because it didn’t really shock me as much as it did many, who had believed all of the NASA propaganda about how safe the vehicle was. Those of us working on it knew better. The only real surprise was the nature of the failure — we had been betting on either a main engine explosion, or loss of tiles on entry (which did happen sixteen years later). I remember mostly thinking about the policy and (for Rockwell) business implications, and speculating on exactly what went wrong. And of course, I didn’t personally know any of those lost, except for having met Judy Resnik once in the cafeteria when she was visiting Downey.
[Noon update]
Clark Lindsey has more anniversary links.
[Update mid afternoon]
Memories from Miles O’Brien:
At first, I thought it was a cloud. But it was such an odd shape. Kind of like a big “Y”. It was, in fact, the awful scar that loomed off the coast of Cape Canaveral – more than 150 miles away. It seemed to be asking us all a question that to this day offers no easy answers: “Why?”naive-shuttle-concept
As you know, the truth is painful and sad. NASA managers were determined to prove their shuttle fleet was truly “operational” – even commercially viable. If their dreams had become reality, 1986 would have been the busiest year ever in the history of the Space Transportation System.
Fifteen flights were scheduled over 11 months. One was supposed to be the first mission to launch from the new shuttle facility at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Nine communications satellites, three classified payloads for the Pentagon and two major unmanned probes were to be carried into space in the payload bay of an orbiter that year.
NASA managers were trying to live up to years and years of their own unrealistic expectations, fanciful claims, pure science-fiction, and outright lies.
So when they discounted and discarded the firm “no-go” admonitions of engineers at the Thiokol plant in Utah where the solid rocket boosters are made, mission mangers team were, in fact, lying to themselves.
In many ways, when they continue to defend the status quo, they still are.
More Space Policy News
Jeff Foust has some interesting comments from the administrator, and more criticism of the ostensible plans from parochial congresspeople. There is also some confirmation of yesterday’s scoop by the Orlando Sentinel. And interestingly, there was “no discussion of a heavy-lift vehicle.” I’m not sure whether this means that there isn’t one, or that it simply wasn’t discussed. Since NASA is embarking on a new architecture study, I wonder if a no-heavy-lifter option will be on the table?
Owing O’Keefe A Correction
That’s what CBS and the LA Times do.
A Roundup Of SOTU Reactions
From Instapundit. They’re not pretty.
Is The Teleprompter
…a sign of emotional distress?
The man is clearly way out of his depth.
Historians Gone Wild
For some reason, the History News Network has decided to go on the attack against Liberal Fascism (the book, not the belief system), two years after it was first published. Jonah responds.
Top Donkeys At War
Good. It will help reduce the warfare they’ve been making on the rest of us and the economy.
Drinking Game Suggestions
Jonah has some in preparation for the latest Obama borefest.
I’m not sure there’s room to be too original here. His usual phrases are familiar enough: “Let me be clear,” “make no mistake,” “this will not be easy” etc. There’s nothing wrong with that sort of thing. One different way to go is conceptual or thematic. Every time Obama suggests there’s a consensus among experts about a proposal when there isn’t, drink. Every time he claims to be aligned with the populist backlash he created, drink. Every time he suggests that History with a capital H demands that we do whatever it is he’s talking about, drink. Every time he says that he’s being “pragmatic” or “bipartisan” when he’s actually being wildly ideological or partisan, drink. And so on.
My own preference is to drink every time he says something that will obviously cost me money. If that seems like an invitation to alcohol poisoning, you could narrow it down slightly by drinking only when something will cost you money and make the economy worse at the same time.
I don’t think it would narrow it down much.
Anyway, I’ll miss it, or rather, I won’t watch it (I won’t miss it at all). I’m going to a book party for Amy Alkon in Santa Monica.
[Update a while later]
Sarah Elizabeth has some predictions:
If the past two weeks are any indication, the President’s State of the Union address tonight will be hilarious.
I don’t say that to be flippant or snarky, as I am admittedly wont to do. I say that genuinely and from a place of what I consider to be astute analysis.
Case in point: After Scott Brown’s stunning Senate victory in Massachusetts and what was the political equivalent of the Boston Massacre, the story line that immediately emerged out of the White House’s Play-Doh spin factory was that Barack Obama – the Harvard-educated, memoir-penning intellectual and oratorical genius – is now a populist!
If that didn’t generate a chuckle, you’d better get your funny bone examined. To put a finer point on it, the Obama administration now wants you to believe that the same guy who criticized the heartland for clinging to guns and religion, who told Cambridge, Mass., police that they behaved “stupidly,” who made fun of Scott Brown for driving a pickup truck, is now a bona fide man of the people.
I told you: hilarious.
The guy we knew from the past year and from the campaign trail – lofty rhetoric, elitist pontificating from on high – was “Obama: Live at the Acropolis.” The State of the Union will mark a new beginning. Call it the debut of “Obama: Live at Folsom Prison.”
So as we gear up for the speech, may I suggest that you include in your survival kit a six-pack of your favorite adult beverage so we can play a little drinking game called “Barack the Plumber.”
I’m still not going to listen.
[Update early afternoon]
Here are the talking points for the speech. As noted, they’re full of whoppers.
More Edwards Revelations
Thoughts from Jim Garaghty:
Unless former John Edwards aide Andrew Young is making it all up — and at this point, Edwards has forfeited the benefit of the doubt — America came within Ohio’s electoral votes of electing a mad, narcissistic, and perhaps psychopathic monster to the vice presidency.
…It can’t be said enough. Almost every Democrat in the country did everything they could to put this man into the vice presidency in 2004, and quite a few of them worked hard to put him into the presidency in 2007 and 2008.
It’s what they do. And the truly disgusting thing is the way that the press, particularly the LA Times, covered for him.