Category Archives: Political Commentary

Political Commentary, Space

Sucking Hind Tit

4 Comments

Al Fansome has some numbers to show where the Obama administration puts space in terms of federal R&D priority (scroll down to the eleventh comment):

I reviewed the stimulus package for the science & tech agencies. I have listed them by order of amount received in the stimulus bill.

DOE receives $43.9 Billion (for energy related projects.)

NIH receives $4.6 Billion.

National Telecommunications & Information Administration receives $3.8 Billion.

NSF receives $2.5 Billion.

NOAA receives $1 Billion.

NASA receives $600 million.

NIST receives $500 million.

Now you may think “well at least NASA got more than somebody.”

But wait, the President’s budget request for NIST for FY2009 was $678 million.
http://www.nist.gov/public_affairs/releases/budget_2009.htm

The NIST stimulus package of $500M is 74% of its FY2009 budget request.

FWIW,

– Al

PS — This is completely depressing.

I’m certainly not surprised. I keep telling people that civil space isn’t important. This is just more proof of that.

Continue reading Sucking Hind Tit →

Business, Economics, Political Commentary, Space

Chicken And Egg

15 Comments

Which comes first, the car or the road?

“They’ve all looked at it from the perspective of how to build the car. We looked at it from the perspective of how to run an entire country without oil. You’ve got to put the infrastructure ahead of the cars.” The venture is coordinating with some car manufacturers who plan to create electric vehicles to ensure that the infrastructure will be utilized.

We have the same problem in space. No one is building vehicles designed to use gas stations in space because the gas stations don’t exist. No one is building the gas stations because there are no vehicles designed to use them. This is a place where government could lead by making it policy that this is the future of space transportation, and establishing standards (just as in the eighties, it was the flawed policy that everything would be flown on Shuttle, and that payloads had to meet its payload-integration requirements).

Political Commentary, Space

Not Rolling Dice

28 Comments

I’ve commented in the past (even recently) that risk estimates of continuing to fly the Shuttle are overblown. There are good arguments to retire the system, but the risk of losing the crew isn’t one of them, both because they aren’t as high as people are saying, and because losing another crew wouldn’t be the end of the world. As I’ve said repeatedly, if we’re not willing to risk human lives on spaceflight, then it’s probably not worth doing. Anyway, Dick Covey, former astronaut and head of USA, apparently agrees with me (at least about the risk numbers):

The often-quoted PRA numbers do not factor in the continuous improvement in the vehicle and operations — of which there have been numerous and significant changes — or the quality and performance of the team that makes it work.

PRA estimates alone should never be used to reach a go/no-go determination on flying one, two or 10 more missions. PRA is intended primarily to provide an analytical yardstick for making sound engineering decisions about the development of a system and whether incremental changes in a system would improve or degrade relative safety.

Applying statistical probability techniques to the space shuttle PRA number to determine the risk of flying multiple missions implies a randomness in safe shuttle operations that does not exist, and belies the real approach to risk identification and management that defines the current space shuttle program.

The shuttle currently operates at the highest level of safety in its history. It is not without risk, but that risk is better understood and mitigated now than at any time in shuttle history.

Absolutely. The Shuttle has never been safer than it is today. Mike Griffin has just been using the PRA numbers to scare Congress into retiring the system so he could free up the funds for the Scotty rocket.

And this nonsense about needing “recertification” (whatever that means — it was never “certified” in the first place) in 2010 is just that. The CAIB never really provided any basis for this date. It’s an arbitrary one that just happened to coincide with the planned completion of ISS, so it seemed like a good marker for the decision as to whether or not to continue to program. We don’t really know if the vehicles need an OMDP, or mini or nano OMDP. We would just have to continue to inspect as we fly.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space

Good Luck With That

1 Comment

Jim Pinkerton thinks that space development should be at the center of Obama’s stimulus plan.

The problem is that, as “anonymous.space” points out, it isn’t particularly stimulating in the short run:

Unfortunately, departments and agencies with large portions of their budgets dedicated to multi-year development projects — like NASA and DoD — are extremely poor prospects for near-term economic stimulus funding. Congress appropriates the vast majority of NASA’s $17 billion budget as two-year funding, meaning that NASA has two years to get the funding on contract or otherwise awarded. NASA has an even longer period of time to spend the funding — i.e., obtain a receipt from the contractor and pay them. If the White House and Congress want to see federal funding pumped into the economy in early to mid-2009, NASA would be a very poor choice of vehicle for that funding (as much as I wish it were otherwise). Funding appropriated for NASA in 2009 would not really be flowing until 2010-12.

Space projects are about the farthest thing from shovel ready. And there’s a lot of up-front effort that has to go in to how to properly spend the money.

I met Pinkerton at a free-market space symposium sponsored by Cato about a decade ago. He was (and remains) very enthusiastic about space, but very skeptical about private space.

[Update a couple minutes later]

Over in the same comment thread as the one from “anonymous.space,” Charles in Houston has a great stimulus idea:

OK, I can’t help myself!!! I have to at least fire off a controversial and pointlessly realistic posting on the NASA As Stimulus idea!!!

Why not create a few more NASA centers? We have created lots of jobs by opening the Shared Services Center and the Independent Verification center and some other center that I forgot about and maintaining a whole host of overlapping Centers for years. Why not open a few more in Detroit and hire a bunch of auto workers to do something or the other?? You would build parking lots and visitor’s centers and attract tourists – all NASA facilities attract tourists like picnics attract ants.

He might be able to get John Conyers’ support for that one.

[Update a few minutes later]

Here’s the original version of the Pinkerton piece at Fox News, which is much easier on the eyes to read. The Lifeboat Foundation really needs a site redesign.

Humor, Political Commentary, Popular Culture, Satire

Just Arrived In Big Hollywood

3 Comments

Iowahawk:

Cold Humpcrack Creekwater: Two retarded gay cowgirl sisters (Rene Zellweger, Traci Lords) defy a fundamentalist sherriff (Chris Cooper) and discover love in this 1930’s period piece set in the Appalachian outback of Nebraskansaw.

Angel Soft This: In a shocking and sometimes humorous indictment of the toilet paper industry, filmmaker Morgan Spurlock documents the ravages he suffers after 30 straight days of non-stop butt-wiping.

Snow Fuji Mountain: Mothra (Toby Damon) and Gamera (Orlando Law) discover forbidden love while destroying Tokyo in this story of nuclear-triggered sexual awakening.

I would actually pay to see some of these.