Category Archives: Political Commentary

Political Commentary, Space

Administrator Isakowitz?

2 Comments

Given all the previous “front runners,” I’m taking this latest rumor with at least one grain, and maybe half the shaker, of salt. Some of the comments are encouraging, and Steve is undoubtedly a smart guy, but my recollection of him from OMB was that he was a pretty traditional thinker when it came to launch and didn’t think that costs could be reduced much from where they were. But if Griffin chased him out with Steidle, that’s definitely a point in his favor. And commenter “Major Tom” (who I think is “anonymous.space” under a new pseudonym) is pretty impressed, which seems like a good sign to me.

[Update a few minutes later]

“Major Tom” weighs in in comments with more info (of which I had, surprisingly, been unaware). Any negative impression I have of Steve Isakowitz is from back in the nineties, and may be based on a single (perhaps even out-of context) quote that I saw from him somewhere (perhaps Space News). So don’t take my opinion over the majority (and particularly “Major Tom”‘s) in this matter.

Political Commentary, War Commentary

The British Civil War

1 Comment

…in Afghanistan:

Luring jihadist Brits overseas and killing them in Afghanistan is certainly a swifter response to the problem than having them sitting at “home” plotting to blow up Glasgow Airport while the government makes ever more desperate efforts to appease them. But no doubt some obliging judge will soon rule that it’s in breach of the European Human Rights Act for British troops in Afghanistan to shoot at British passport holders.

Move along, folks, nothing to see here.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, War Commentary

The Alternate Reality

18 Comments

…in which the administration lives, that results in their selling out of Israel:

I would sum it up as a growing administration belief that solid U.S. support for Israel is probably the reason for radical Islamic anti-American terrorism; and, secondly, the Palestinian issue can be best resolved with the return of Israel to the 1967 borders. Apparently, this thought stems from the assumption that there has been a radical reappraisal about Israel on the part of the Arab nations, and Islamic world at large, who in toto have now accepted Israel’s right to exist. Therefore, with the casus belli removed, in the future we should expect no more wars — like 1948, 1956, and 1967, when Israel did not hold the Golan Heights or the West Bank. Accordingly, the withdrawals from Lebanon and Gaza were positive first-steps and left stability in their wake.

I suspect that Netanyahu knows that he’s on his own now.

Political Commentary, Space

In Praise Of Large Payloads

46 Comments

Joseph Friedlander discusses BFRs over at Next Big Future.

Absent a dire need (e.g., an asteroid heading right at us), I don’t see these vehicles being developed with the current market or political environment. They’re just too damned big, and they’d have too low a flight rate. I think that, barring some huge tech (probably nanotech) breakthrough, the path to space lies in small reusable chemical vehicles that grow in capability (suborbital, then on to orbit, with perhaps point-to-point in between), then size as their markets grow with them.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space

What Is “The Bush Moon Plan”?

23 Comments

Whatever it is, AvWeek says that the Obama administration is going to “stick with it.”

The fiscal 2010 NASA budget outline to be released by the Obama Administration Feb. 26 adds almost $700 million to the out-year figure proposed in the fiscal 2009 budget request submitted by former President Bush, and sticks with the goal of returning humans to the moon by 2020.

Well, the story doesn’t support the headline. What they’re sticking with is the goal, not the plan (which is a description of how the goal is to be achieved). It’s hard to know whether this is good news or bad. It depends on whether or not the “plan” (i.e., Constellation/ESAS) is going to be stuck with. We still have no information about the plan.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

That’s Not The John Maynard Keynes That I Knew

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Apparently, President Obama and the Congressional Democrats have thrown Keynes under the bus, too, even though they don’t realize it:

…it is true that government direction of capital is something Keynes advocated. But the current direction of capital by government is being conducted in a manner that flies in the face of Keynes’s underlying justifications for such state involvement.

For example, the stimulation of investment has thus far been ad hoc. The Treasury and Federal Reserve have infused capital into some firms but not others. In the case of financial firms, the rationales have been to promote liquidity or prevent insolvency or both. The government has moved on to direct capital into the troubled automobile industry. The Federal Reserve and the Treasury are buying mortgage-backed securities, thereby making more credit available to the housing industry. The construction trades are expecting a huge infusion of capital under the rubric of “infrastructure” spending. And now an enormous list of other industries has been approved for temporary stimulation by the Obama administration.

It is difficult to imagine that Keynes would be enthusiastic about these temporary and discretionary policies given his diagnosis of the fundamental problem.

The historical record is helpful here. Keynes opposed immediate, short-term stimulus in 1937 when the British unemployment rate was 11 percent—much higher than we are experiencing today. Furthermore, he opposed temporary reductions in the short-term rates of interest because he believed that variability of interest rates sent the wrong long-term message. As he argued in “How to Avoid a Slump,” an article in the Times of London newspaper, “A low enough long-term rate of interest cannot be achieved if we allow it to be believed that better terms will be obtainable from time to time by those who keep their resources liquid.”

Of course, most of these people are far too economically illiterate to even understand Keynes. Instead, they simply adulate him as a god and use him as an excuse to do what they want to do anyway, regardless of whether or not it’s truly Keynesian.

[Update early evening]

More historical ignorance: Barack Obama versus Henry David Thoreau. Now, Thoreau was actually sort of a loon, and his “wisdom” is highly overrated, as P. J. O’Rourke has amusingly pointed out in the past, but the notion that the small-government philosopher would have approved of the “stimulus” plan is ludicrous.

Business, Economics, Political Commentary, Space

Thoughts On COTS

…along with fixed-price versus cost-plus, appropriate payment milestones, and “skin in the game,” from Jon Goff.

We have to come up with much more innovative means of reducing the cost of access to orbit, something that Ares I doesn’t do at all. Charles Miller just became “Senior Advisor” on space commercialization with NASA’s Innovative Partnership Programs Office, so perhaps he will be able to help implement some of these kinds of ideas.

Political Commentary, Science And Society, Space

More OCO Fallout

16 Comments

Alan Boyle has a story on the loss of the Orbiting Carbon Observatory, with an amusingly stupid comment in his comments section:

When did NASA become so political? Oh right, when the neocons filled it with “scientists” who don’t like science that refutes the Bible (that is to say, all science). F-ing crazy people. This is what happens when the cornerstones of our civilization fall before the onslaught of religion: our future falls into the ocean. Adios homo sapiens.

Yes, there was never any politics at NASA before those evil “neocons” came along.

Seriously, WTF is this person talking about? When did NASA get “filled” with “scientists” who “don’t like science that refutes the Bible”? And how did they manage to infiltrate Orbital Sciences? Did I miss that?