Category Archives: Political Commentary

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Survey The Upcoming Disaster

12 Comments

The proposed “Stimulus” Package is on line now.

As Glenn Reynolds says, it’s basically a massive transfer of wealth to the politically connected from the politically unconnected.

[Update a few minutes later]

Robert Samuelson has some gloomy thoughts:

in practice, the stimulus could disappoint. Parts of the House package look like a giant political slush fund, with money sprinkled to dozens of programs. There’s $50 million for the National Endowment for the Arts, $200 million for the Teacher Incentive Fund and $15.6 billion for increased Pell Grants to college students. Some of these proposals, whatever their other merits, won’t produce many new jobs.

Another problem: Construction spending — for schools, clinics, roads — may start so slowly that there will be little immediate economic boost. The Congressional Budget Office examined $356 billion in spending proposals and concluded that only 7 percent would be spent in 2009 and 31 percent in 2010.

Assume, however, that the stimulus is a smashing success. It cushions the recession. Unemployment (now: 7.2 percent) stops rising at, say, 8 percent instead of 10 percent. Still, a temporary stimulus can’t fuel a permanent recovery. That requires a strong financial system to supply an expanding economy’s credit needs. How we get that isn’t clear.

I hope it doesn’t take another war to get us out of this.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space, Space History

Restructuring The Dream

3 Comments

I was going to write about this latest attempt to resurrect the mythical “Apollo spirit” by former CNN science reporter Miles O’Brien. But fortunately, Paul Spudis gives him the history lesson so I don’t have to. Well, not just so I don’t have to — that’s just a nice side effect for me, because I’m busy.

As Paul notes, Mike Griffin and (to a lesser degree, even before Griffin) NASA’s biggest mistake is in assuming that we can just pick up where we left off with the unsustainable and unaffordable Apollo program and somehow sustain and afford it. NASA has to get much more innovative, think about how to use existing infrastructure that has other uses (which is why it should, at least initially, be EELV rather than Shuttle derived), encourage and involve the private sector to a much greater degree, and think marginal cost rather than development cost, or they’ll end up with another Shuttle, and station, regardless of what the mold lines of the vehicles look like.

[Update a few minutes later]

Unsurprisingly, Mark Whittington (who really ought to fix his permalinks so they don’t double the tag) is still guzzling the koolaid by the pitcher.

[Another update a couple minutes later]

Over at The Space Review (which now seems to be allowing comments, though there are none yet at this article), Stokes McMillan hopes that Kennedy’s first 100 days will be repeated by Obama.

Don’t count on it. In fact, don’t even hope for it, if it’s a repeat of Apollo. Apollo was a unique set of circumstances, and unlikely to repeat. In order for history to repeat, using the JFK model, would be for him to have some humiliating foreign policy event comparable to the Bay of Pigs (unfortunately, that one’s not at all unlikely…) and then another exogenous event that spurs us into another space race. The only thing that I could think of that would be comparable to the double blow of first being beaten into space four years later, and then beaten into a man in space in the first hundred days, would be a surprise manned Mars landing by (say) the Chinese. And even then, I wouldn’t bet on a revitalized American space program as a response.

Sorry, but compared to other administration perceived concerns (global warming, lack of health care, the economy, etc.) space simply isn’t important. And it hasn’t been for over forty years.

[Update a while later]

Don’t look to the Europeans to scare us into another space race. Space isn’t important there, either:

Sources close to the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV)/Advanced Reentry Vehicle (ARV) team are telling Hyperbola that the November 2008 ESA ministerial meeting outcome was seen as catastrophic for the agency’s hopes for ARV operating before the International Space Station (ISS) is de-orbited, even with a 2020 end of life target, and a follow-on manned version of ARV.

But there will be plenty of jobs, so it’s OK.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Space, Space Science, Technology and Society

Missing The Point At The Economist

3 Comments

I just want to pull my hair, of which I have little to spare, when I read editorials like this:

Luckily, technology means that man can explore both the moon and Mars more fully without going there himself. Robots are better and cheaper than they have ever been. They can work tirelessly for years, beaming back data and images, and returning samples to Earth. They can also be made sterile, which germ-infested humans, who risk spreading disease around the solar system, cannot.

Here we go again. Humans versus robots, it’s all about science and exploration. It is not all about science and/or exploration. The space program is about much more than that, but the popular mythology continues.

Humanity, some will argue, is driven by a yearning to boldly go to places far beyond its crowded corner of the universe. If so, private efforts will surely carry people into space (though whether they should be allowed to, given the risk of contaminating distant ecosystems, is worth considering). In the meantime, Mr Obama’s promise in his inauguration speech to “restore science to its rightful place” sounds like good news for the sort of curiosity-driven research that will allow us to find out whether those plumes of gas are signs of life.

Hey, anyone who reads this site know that I’m all for private efforts carrying people into space. They also know that I don’t think that anyone has a right to not “allow them to do so,” and that I place a higher value on humanity and expanding earthly life into the universe than on unknown “distant ecosystems.” What have “distant ecosystems” ever done for the solar system?

I also question the notion that Obama’s gratuitous digs at the Bush science policy had anything whatsoever to do with space policy. And of course, to imagine that they did, is part of the confused policy trap of thinking that space is synonymous with science.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, War Commentary

Peace In The Middle East

5 Comments

Can George Mitchell bring it? I doubt it. As the article notes, the comparison of Hamas to the IRA is spurious, and the Democrats in general, including George Mitchell, seem to think that it’s possible to engage in diplomacy with someone whose goal, and in fact primary motivation in life, is to kill you. What does that “dialogue” look like? What would be the “compromise”? That only half the Jews go into the sea?

Political Commentary, Space, Space and Campaign 2008

“Reboot NASA”

14 Comments

Jim Meigs over at Popular Mechanics has some immediate policy suggestions for the new administration. I disagree that the moon isn’t a useful goal — my concern is the horrific expense of the way that NASA proposes to do it, and following Jim’s advice on building a heavy lifter isn’t going to help with that. Whether or not we need heavy lift is one of those assumptions that need to be reexamined. What we need is low-cost lift, not heavy lift, and building a huge rocket won’t provide it.

Political Commentary

“The Right Man Won”

15 Comments

Jim Geraghty is relieved that John McCain lost:

Mac is back — back to his moral preening about how bipartisan he is, back to his reflexive demonization of his own party, back to his refusal to recognize any legitimate concerns raised by those who disagree with him. If we’re going to have Democratic agenda enacted, better it be by a Democrat than a Republican obsessed with avoiding the “partisan” label in the White House.

So am I — he deserved to. That doesn’t mean that Obama deserved to win, though. The right man lost, but that doesn’t mean that the right man won. I just wish that McCain hadn’t been the nominee. The Republican Party needs to figure out how to prevent such a debacle again, by at least closing its primaries.

[Update a few minutes later]

Iowahawk has updated the Idiossey:

“Who dares challenge me now?” asked Obamacles. “For I am Obamacles, vanquisher of Hildusa, of whom all of Demos sing;
Make him the mightiest, so that I might find him worthy.”

“Your foe will be the grizzled warrior Crustius,” said the Doritos,
As Obamacles laughed in disbelief; for though brave Crustius had once proved great valor in the tragic war of Namos,
He had grown old and addled sailing the Sea of Maverikus.
In years a full score he sailed, seeking the fabled Microphone of Media,
Only to crash on its shoals, lured to doom by the flattery of the Sirens.

“Be not hasty in thy hubris, Obamacles,” warned the Doritos.
“Although he is old and stranded and beset by mutineers, grizzled Crustius is far craftier than in your imaginings.”

True to the prophesy of the Doritos, wily Crustius had a secret trick up his toga.
From his rock-strewn shipwreck he summoned Palina, huntress of Wasilla,
Whose fertile loins had many odd-named children bore,
Bristol and Trig, Dakota and Algebra, Calculus and Physed,
And yet she retained the visage and figure of a goddess.

Palina emerged from the sea, springing fully formed from a clamshell,
Brandishing the spear that had slain a thousand antlered beasts.
Once mutinous, the Crustonauts were instantly heartened,
For now they sensed a chance at victory.

Sadly, the tale has a tragic ending.