Alan Boyle has a quick roundup.
Category Archives: Political Commentary
Fish, Or Fowl?
So Pete Siebold got the first type rating for White Knight Two.
OK, what does that mean? It implies to me that it’s an airplane. But it’s not going to be certified as an aircraft by AVR. So what does it mean to have a type rating for it?
I had a (semi) heated discussion with Will Whitehorn about this subject at the ISDC, over beers. I asked him how he can take passengers for weightless training in WK2 if he’s not getting certified under Part 25 (or whatever). His claim (and I’m not doubting his claim) is that George Nield has confirmed to him that all flights of WK2, with or without SS2, will be regulated by AST, and not AVR, because it’s part of a suborbital system. Thus, if AST deems that the training is necessary for passenger safety, they will be allowed to provide it on WK2, even without carrying the spacecraft itself.
Now, I could see them getting the thing an airworthiness certificate (from AVR) and then flying people in the plane as an experimental aircraft, with permission from the local FSDO, using the flight training exemption, which is what we used to do for weightless flights in the T-39 back in the early nineties. What I still don’t understand, regardless of how vehemently Will insists on it, is how AST can regulate an airplane, not engaged in suborbital flight. “Suborbital” flights were carefully defined in the legislation a few years ago (“thrust exceeding lift for significant portion of flight”), and a WK2 flight sans SS2 (i.e., it is no longer part of a suborbital system) whose thrust never exceeds its lift except briefly during take off, simply does not satisfy the criterion.
As I told Will then, expect a turf battle to crop up within the FAA once they start to actually fly passengers in the thing. I could be wrong, but can’t see AVR letting AST get away with it, and I think they’ll have the law on their side.
[Update a couple minutes later]
Another thought. Will the vehicle have an N number on the tail? If so, who will issue it?
[Update a couple minutes later]
D’oh!
I misread the post. He got a type rating for SS2. That raises different questions. Is AST now in the business of providing type ratings? Because SS2 is clearly a suborbital vehicle, and within their purview.
And is Siebold “type rated” for WK2, or is merely the “pilot”? Which was the original question. And the tail number question remains, for both vehicles. At least for SS2, since “N” designates US, how about an “NS” number, to indicate that it’s a space vehicle and to allow AST to maintain its own data base that wouldn’t interfere with AVR’s?
[Update early evening]
Double d’oh! I read it right the first time, as Ed Wright points out.
End Of An Extravaganza
John Derbyshire says that government human spaceflight was largely pointless, and likely to end soon.
I don’t actually find much in there with which to disagree (I’ve pointed out the Zheng He analogy myself) — we have gotten horrible value for the money spent over the past forty years, and I do think that the hope is for private space. Though if the Augustine Commission could recognize and articulate the value to the nation and planet of becoming truly space faring, for things like planetary defense, and put forth a realistic plan to do it, I suppose that it’s possible it will survive somehow, but it will have to have sufficient pork content, which will defeat the purpose. But it’s hard to see Constellation continuing to exist in its current form.
I’m actually working on (or at least supposed to be working on) a longish piece for the summer issue of The New Atlantis on this subject.
[Tuesday afternoon update]
I will say that I think that “pointless” is too strong a word — as I said, we have gotten quite a bit of value, but not enough to justify the expenditure. And in many ways, Apollo has actually set us back from progress in space, by establishing a failed government-development model that lives on to this day in the form of Constellation. I hope that the Augustine Commission can finally fix this, but I fear that it won’t.
Thoughts On Ivy-League Elites
…and victimology:
One aspect of the speech that hasn’t received sufficient attention is the focus on victimology: Israelis were victims of the Holocaust, Palestinians victims of dislocation after the founding of Israel, Americans the victim of the 9/11 terrorists, Arabs the victims of Western imperialism, and so forth.
That this appeals to Obama is not surprising. He and I attended law school at the same time, Obama at Harvard and me at Yale. Victimology was all the rage. It gave one not only moral standing, but, oddly enough (like Sotomayor’s “wise Latina”) a certain level of intellectual standing.
During our first year in law school, there was a one-day nationwide “student strike for diversity” at elite law schools, including Harvard and Yale. (I don’t know for sure whether Obama was involved in this “strike,” but he gave a speech on behalf of uber-diversity advocate, and Harvard lawprof, Derrick Bell.) At Yale, students gave speeches throughout the day. What struck me at the time was how eager, almost desperate, the various student speech-givers were to be perceived as victims.
As he notes, Obama ignores, or seems unaware of or indifferent to, the real reasons that we support Israel, relative to its despotic neighbors. But I guess western liberal democracies just aren’t worth defending any more. After all, it’s all culturally relative.
Oh, and speaking of Marty Peretz (about whom we’d still like to know who he voted for), he’s wondering if Dennis Ross was removed from his planned position of envoy to Iran because he’s too hawkish, or too Jewish.
Obama Got His 3 AM Phone Call
…and voted “present.“
Maybe TOTUS is on summer vacation.
[Update late afternoon]
Speak for America, Mr. President:
Some argue that the brave Iranians demonstrating for freedom and democracy would be better off if the American president somehow stayed out of the fight. Really? But Barack Obama is president. His statement wouldn’t be crafted by those dreaded neocons who vulgarly thought all people would like a chance to govern themselves and deserved some modicum of U.S. support in that endeavor. It would be written by subtle liberal internationalists, who would get the pitch and tone just right. And the statement wouldn’t be delivered by the notorious George Bush (who did, however, weigh in usefully in somewhat similar situations in Ukraine and Lebanon). It would be delivered by the popular and credible speaker-to-the-Muslim-world, Barack Obama. Does anyone really think that a strong Obama statement of solidarity with the Iranian people, and a strong rebuke to those who steal elections and shoot demonstrators, wouldn’t help the dissidents in Iran?
I don’t believe it. I don’t believe Barack Obama believes it. As he put it in The Audacity of Hope: “We can inspire and invite other people to assert their freedoms;…we can speak out on behalf of local leaders whose rights are violated; and we can apply economic and diplomatic pressure to those who repeatedly violate the rights of their own people.”
Maybe someone else wrote that book. He continues to vote “present.”
[Late afternoon update]
The State Department refuses to condemn the crackdown:
Lefties keep assuring me on Twitter that western meddling will only make it easier for the regime to demonize the protesters, but (a) the demonization’s going to happen anyway, (b) no one’s asking Obama to send in the Marines, just to speak up, and (c) Angela Merkel managed to issue a statement earlier today calling the Basij thuggery “completely unacceptable” without killing the uprising in its crib. And still, from the White House, nothing. To think, some commentators are accusing The One of “cowardly silence.”
You’ll also be pleased to know that, according to no less than the New York Times, Obama didn’t bother holding any meetings or conference calls about this yesterday. Remember: Health care is a “crisis.” This is but a “situation.”
Well, to be fair, perhaps they want to avoid charges of hypocrisy when they may have to do the same thing here next November.
Good News And Bad News
From Carolyn Glick, who was never fooled by the Obama administration:
If the Palestinians follow through with their threat to renew their terror war against Israel it will be quite bad. This is so not because Israel will be unable to defend itself. Israel has the means to defend itself. It will be quite bad because, in light of the hostile treatment Israel is suffering at the hands of the Obama administration, and given the central role the U.S. under Lt. Gen. Keith Dayton is playing in arming and training the Palestinian army that will likely be attacking Israeli targets in Judea and Samaria, the U.S. may well side with the Arabs against Israel. The administration is already placing limitations on arms sales to Israel. In this event, Israel will have to move quickly to find other suppliers.
It is unlikely today that Arab states will go to war with Israel, although that could change quickly if Iran acquires nuclear weapons. In that event, the Iranians will be in a position to blackmail Arab states like Egypt and Jordan into abrogating their peace treaties with Israel and opening hostilities against it. Iran would accomplish this task by threatening to overthrow the Mubarak regime and the Hashemite Kingdom. It is this specter — along with the specter of nuclear attack and chronic terror violence conducted under Iran’s nuclear umbrella — that makes it essential for Israel to move quickly to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.
LOPEZ: How nervous is Israel about Ahmadinejad’s “reelection”?
GLICK: In a round about sort of way, Ahmadinejad’s “reelection” empowers Israel to take the necessary action. By stealing the election, Ahmadinejad now stands in open opposition to the Iranian people. This decreases the likelihood that the public will rally around the regime in the event of an Israeli strike against Iran’s nuclear installations.
Ahmadinejad’s open hatred of the U.S. and his humiliation of the Obama administration will similarly make it more difficult politically for the administration to prevent Israel from striking Iran. If before the Iranian elections it was easy to see the administration signing on to U.N. Security Council sanctions against Israel in the event of an Israeli strike against Iran, or even shooting down Israeli aircraft en route to Iran, in their aftermath, such prospects seem more unlikely.
Emphasis mine. I wish that it were unthinkable, but it’s not.
The Military Space Mess
Dwayne Day has a depressing report on a symposium last week. It’s both difficult and frightening to contemplate that Milspace is even more screwed up than NASA, but there it is. And there’s no reason to think that it’s going to get any better, particularly under this administration.
All In The Family
“Seeking Answers on IG Firing, Sen. Grassley Asks About Possible Role of First Lady’s Office.”
Why should we be surprised? She’s from Chicago, too.
And of course, if a Republican president had fired an IG who was getting too close to a campaign contributor, it would be a huge scandal. But it wasn’t, so it’s not.
If true, this would be Michelle’s Travelgate. Except Hillary didn’t actually suffer that much from Travelgate. Because…you know…she wasn’t a Republican. Of course, it also helped that there were a lot of other Hillary scandals to distract from that one.
On The Wrong Side Of History
Iraq is proving to be amazingly resilient, not only functioning as a democracy, but by withstanding the best efforts of Iran to kill it off, proving destabilizing to Iran itself.
By removing Saddam, and trying to isolate Ahmadinejad and appeal to the Iranian people, Bush at least tried to prep the landscape for democratic change.
In contrast, Obama’s past siren calls to quit Iraq, the “optional” war, his snubbing of Maliki, his ahistorical efforts to charm the Islamic Street, and apologies to theocratic Iran while lavishing attention on Ahmadinejad put him on the wrong side of history.
If Obama were wise, he would get out pronto a statement condemning the anti-democratic violence of the Iranian government, and suggesting it follow the Iraq example of free and internationally inspected elections.
At some point, one should see that moral equivalence and multicultural non-judgementalism, however catchy for the moment, are as stupid as they are amoral, and will put the U.S in a foolish, “make it up as we go along” position.
“One” should see that, but they never do. And Obama clearly isn’t wise, and his non-stop criticism of establishing a democracy in Iraq, which got him the nomination last year, puts him in an awkward moral position to now point to it as a beacon of true hope and change in the Middle East. But that’s what the nation voted for.
[Update a few minutes later]
Obama, then and now:
In 2008 he sounded serious and committed to stopping the Iranian nuclear threat and was candid about the nature of the regime. In Cairo, all that was gone. Nary a direct word of criticism of the Iranian regime (Holocaust denial was never tied to the Iranians and was covered in a separate section of his address). In 2008 he was telling Iran it would have no nuclear capability; in 2009 he was declaring no country could tell Iran it couldn’t have a nuclear capability. A complete reversal in tone and substance.
It’s almost like he’ll say anything to get into power, after which his true agenda becomes clear.
And in this case, of course, the Jews who voted for him were the rubes (as are the astounding number of Jews who continue to vote for Democrats in general).
[Update a couple minutse later]
“Hope and change” for me, but not for thee. At least if thee is Iranian. Yes, this administration will probably cheerfully sell out the Iranian people for a “deal” with the mullahs. Which will be useless for both us and the Iranian people, but it will make the diplomats happy.
[Update a few minutes later]
Who did you vote for, Marty? I’d like to know, too.
An Utter Waste Of Money
That’s what the first two years of college are for most people:
Good students from good high schools, who have not taken advanced placement, know how to play the repetition game. They cut class and recycle their high school term papers.
Early in my teaching career, I had a student from one of the state’s best high schools. She was bright, but hardly exceptional. I found she was taking more than a full class load and holding down a full-time job. I was amazed. She told me that her classes at a suburban high school were more demanding than their repetition at the university. She chose classes where attendance wasn’t mandatory. Was she recycling her high school term papers? Of course; so was everyone else from her class.
A student in the sciences or engineering could not remotely do this, but the liberal arts have become intellectual wastelands, with an emphasis on persuading a captive audience as to the eternal verities of professors’ beliefs about racism, sexism, and homophobia.
A colleague in engineering used to remind me that in his college “PC” stood for personal computer, not political correctness. His dean was reprimanded for not sending his graduate students to diversity training during orientation week. The dean stated that engineering was a serious subject and his students had important assignments during that week. Told that he would have to answer to an administrative hearing, he said that he would be pleased to show up along with several of his alumni, successful businessmen and big contributors to the university. He then said to the diversity apparatchik, “This is a career decision you are about to make.” The hearing never took place. An engineering dean could get away with this. A liberal arts dean could not.
Higher education is the next overvalued and overpriced bubble to pop, I think.