Category Archives: Political Commentary

New Space Site

New to me, anyway. Via “Major Tom” commenting over at Space Politics, I saw for the first time Space Policy Online, run by long-time space policy analyst Marcia Smith. I’ve added it to the blogroll.

And speaking of that site, there’s a story about a hearing yesterday to confirm a new IG for NASA, in which Senator Rockefeller expressed concern about “waste, fraud and abuse” at NASA. Say it ain’t so! But I found this quite the head scratcher:

In wrapping up the hearing, the Senator referred to “constituencies in the world of NASA” who are “very ambitious” and that he goes “blooey” hearing about plans to “pay $1 million and travel to the Moon” and doesn’t know how to react.

Well, apparently he reacts by going “blooey.” What in the hell is he talking about?

California’s Once…

…and future governor?

Note to Jesse Walker. The California comsat thing was one of the reasons for the “Governor Moonbeam” appellation, but a more significant one (as was mentioned) was the Stewart-Brand/Whole-Earth-Catalog connection. Stewart was one of those promoting the ideas of Gerry O’Neill and L-5, and Brown was reportedly quite fascinated by the concept, and space in general. The only time I saw him in person was in April, 1981, when we shared a flight to Orlando from LAX (though he was in first class) for the first launch of the Shuttle (I flew back to see it land as well — he may have as well, but if so, it was on a different flight). And in an “n degrees of Jerry Brown” thing, I sat next to Linda Ronstadt at a concert at McCabe’s in Santa Monica a few years later, but I think they had broken up by then.

One thing not mentioned was the ignominious end to his governorship, in which he took a lot of flak for the fruit-fly spraying, first dithering and delaying it, and then changing his mind and infuriating his supporters on the left. It probably wrecked his chances for Senate. But as the article notes, he’s a resilient guy.

Why We Aren’t A Spacefaring Civilization

Here’s one of the big reasons:

Someone in the AO-100 aviation section of the FAA, who was previously unaware of Armadillo, saw video of their NGLLC flights and decided that while Armadillo had proper permissions to fly above the airport, they did not have permission to fly from a federally subsidized airport. The AST section was surprised to learn about this issue. John says it will be worked out eventually but unfortunately in the meantime they cannot even do tethered tests because of the crazy ruling last year that labeled such tests as launches.

As a commenter notes, imagine if the government had required the Wright Brothers to get permission to fly from Kitty Hawk. It is a shame that the Armadillo team has to waste time and resources learning how to negotiate bureaucracies instead of how to develop safe and effective vehicles.

[Late afternoon update]

The problem seems to have been resolved.

The Baucus Bill

“A fiscal fantasyland.”

That’s actually a pretty good description of the District of Columbia in general.

[Update a few minutes later]

The drug pusher in DC:

An initial bailout of state governments eases their pain and makes them feel better for a little while, after which they’re going to crash without another fix.

It’s all part of the goal of making us all dependent on them.