We’re finally starting to take the asteroid threat seriously enough to start dedicating new telescopes to looking for them. A hundred million dollars seems like a pretty cheap insurance policy against another Tunguska or worse, in a populated area.
Unfortunately, we’re not developing the kind of spacefaring capability we need to do something about it if we see one coming. This is one kind of change that I’d be happy to see with the incoming administration. But it remains to be seen what space policy will come out of the process.
I had suggested this to some people on the transition team, but I’m sure I wasn’t the only one. It looks like the Ares V RFP (and perhaps others) that was going to ruin (as is often the case) the contractors’ holidays with the need to work a proposal, is being postponed (and perhaps going away altogether — we can only hope). It’s a waste of money and contractor resources to force them to bid on a Phase I of a program that’s under review as to whether it should exist at all. Clearly, as noted over at R’n’S, Mike was trying to rush these things to entrench them and make them more of a fait accompli before he leaves, and fortunately, the incoming administration is having none of it.
I’m not sure how that worked, exactly, since they don’t actually have any authority until January, but (just as a guess) if I had been them, I would have told the contractors that I had no intention of funding the program without (at a minimum) a requirements review, which would imply (at a minimum) a rebid, and hope that they would in turn tell NASA that no one would bother to bid now.
This is a truly amazing swamp of lunacy. They are so frightened of Sarah Palin that they’ve gone so far around the bend that they can’t see the bend from there.
…this is not a real business plan, but simply a political document. It exists to provide political cover to members of Congress. But if that’s the case, it’s an unintentionally beautiful illustration of why industrial policy fails. It’s both economically crucial and very hard to allocate capital well; that’s why people who are good at it make so much money. Businesses struggle to do this well, and they’re really trying. What do you think the odds are that this is a wise use of money, when the people involved are barely pretending to try?
All this is doing is kicking the can down the road, and delaying (and making much worse) the inevitable and painful restructuring that has to take place. And I’m not talking about just GM, or the auto industry.
Now, the “off-the-shelf” five-segment first stage for the Ares 1 is going to a new propellant formulation, for environmental reasons. No, that won’t take long or cost much to develop or test. And apparently we don’t even have the capability in country to do it currently — we have to rely on the Swedes.
If they were worried about the environment, they shouldn’t have gone with a solid in the first place.
How long before this monstrosity is put out of its (and our) misery? They need to just take the whole concept out behind the VABarn and put it down with a sledge hammer.
I always laugh when I go into the candy aisle, and see all of these pure sugar concoctions labeled “fat free.” They may not have fat, but they can make you that way in a hurry. It’s also one more reason not to want to have our government, local or federal, nannying our health and diet. A lot of dietary advice is ignorant, or driven by political agendas.
There seems to be little in the US news media about it, though there is an AP story. It seems to be a major constitutional crisis. (Canadian) Mark Steyn explains.
[Thursday afternoon update]
Has the coup failed? It seems to have at least been postponed:
…the decision to suspend Parliament only gives the Tories a reprieve until late January, when they plan to table a budget that could set them up for a no-confidence vote.
Well, in this case (unlike that of GM), it’s probably better to buy time.
Within an hour of Prime Minister Stephen Harper winning a two-month reprieve, some Grit MPs were pulling back from the idea of trying to replace the Tory regime with a Liberal-NDP coalition propped up by the Bloc Quebecois.
Toronto MP Jim Karygiannis says the coalition idea is finished and is calling on Stephane Dion to resign the Liberal leadership sooner rather than later.
Dion is scheduled to step aside as Liberal leader once a successor is chosen May 2 but many Liberals remain uneasy about the prospect of ensconcing him in the prime minister’s office even temporarily.
“We’re on the brink with the U.S. auto manufacturing industry,” Press told The Associated Press in an interview. “If we have a catastrophic failure of one of these car companies, in this tender environment for the economy, it’s a huge blow. It could trigger a depression.”
I’d be inclined to take this more seriously if it weren’t coming from someone asking the taxpayers for a multi-billion-dollar handout.
This is a depressing story about the inability to enforce rules against plagiarism, and the comments more so. I don’t think it was this way when I was in school.