Category Archives: Political Commentary

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Popular Culture, Social Commentary

The Trump Presidency

52 Comments

“How it made me a better American.”

I will continue to praise Trump when he does something good, and criticize him when he behaves stupidly and boorishly.

[Update a few minutes later]

Per Karol’s comments about her disappointment with herself over not being more concerned about Obama’s depredations on the law and decency, a few months ago I started to put together a list of similarities between Obama and Trump, and there are more of them than either of their supporters want to admit:

  • Reverse Midas Touch
  • Cult
  • Inarticulate Foot-in-Mouth Off Prompter
  • Indifference/Hostility To Constitution
  • Charismatic To Selective Audience
  • Reckless Disregard For The Truth
  • Travel Expenses
  • Dunning Kruger
  • Despised by members of his own party

Feel free to add in comments.

[Late-evening update]

I want to thank all those in comments who proved my point about the blind supporters of Trump being unwilling to recognize the similarities with Obama. I hope some Obama supporters will weigh in as well, to reinforce it.

Business, Economics, Political Commentary, Space, Technology and Society

The Sad End Of XCOR

17 Comments

I hadn’t realized that people had put down the full amount of the ticket.

This number jumped out at me:

Xcor eventually raised at least $19.2 million, according to Crunchbase, a platform that tracks fundraising.

Virgin Galactic has spent hundreds of millions of dollars. One wonder what might have been had XCOR gotten even twice as much as they did.

I disagree with this:

The companies took very different approaches to the challenge of reaching space. Virgin Galactic uses a twin-fuselage carrier aircraft to hoist a space plane known as SpaceShipTwo up to a high altitude; it releases the smaller craft, which ignites its own rocket motor to blast into space. Earlier this month, the company reached space with its SpaceShipTwo vehicle for the first time on a test flight.

Using another vehicle or booster to propel a crew craft to space is considered a “much more traditional approach,” said Sonya McMullen, assistant professor of aeronautics at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. But Xcor would have the Lynx climb all the way up under its own power.

“They really took the hard technological approach to the same problem,” McMullen said.

Even for suborbital, there’s not that much benefit to air launch. Single-stage to suborbit is not a technological challenge. While XCOR may have underestimated the technical challenges of Lynx, I doubt there were any that couldn’t have been solved with more funding. Of course, the uncertainty of the market size probably didn’t help in that regard. But losing that ULA contract, after the Air Force cut the funding, was the final straw.

And as I’ve often said, despite the failures (so far) to get a commercial suborbital operation going, there are no intrinsic reasons why it has to be difficult. XCOR had a good technical approach that ultimately failed to find sufficient investment, and VG made poor initial business and design choices that has resulted in them becoming a money sink in a sunk-cost trap for over a decade, despite the much vaster financial resources. As I noted in the last post, I expect that Blue Origin will finally show the way and allow us to determine the market, next year. Maybe even VG finally will as well.

History, Humor, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Popular Culture, Social Commentary

The Year In Review

3 Comments

…from Dave Barry:

APRIL

…when the abandoned Chinese space station Tiangong-1, which has been anxiously watched by scientists as its orbit decayed, plunges back to earth and, in a worst-case outcome, fails to land on attorney Michael Avenatti, thus enabling him to continue appearing on CNN more often than the Geico Gecko.

Meanwhile President Trump, faced with — among other problems — a continuing immigration crisis, increased Russian aggression in Syria and a looming trade war with China, launches a barrage of assault tweets at what is clearly the biggest threat to the nation: Amazon. Trump is forced to back down when the retail giant threatens to suspend the White House’s Amazon Prime membership and cancel delivery of a large order placed by the Defense Department, including six nuclear submarines, two aircraft carriers and a missile-defense system with a five-star average review rating from other nations.

Responding to alleged Russian infiltration of Facebook and massive breaches of user data, the Senate Committee of Aging Senators Who Cannot Operate Their Own Cell Phones Without the Assistance of Minions holds a hearing intended to answer such probing questions as:

▪ What IS Facebook, anyway?

▪ Where does it go when you turn off the computer?

▪ Is there a print version?

▪ Is Facebook the one with the video of a cat riding on a dog?

▪ How the heck do you get a cat to do that, anyway?

Patiently attempting to answer these questions is Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who wears a suit and tie and does a solid job of impersonating a regular human, except for not blinking and at one point having a tentacle emerge briefly from his left ear.

Abroad, the big news is a historic summit between South Korean President Moon Jae-in and North Korea’s Kim Jong-un. In what observers see as a major breakthrough, Kim agrees to sign a letter of agreement explicitly acknowledging, for the first time, that he has exactly the same hairstyle as Bert, of Bert and Ernie.

In sports, Patrick Reed wins the Masters Tournament, prompting jubilant Eagles fans to celebrate by destroying what little is left of Philadelphia.

We laugh so we don’t cry.