Category Archives: Political Commentary

The Anniversary

It’s hard to believe that it’s been seventeen years. Glenn Reynolds has some links and thoughts. Yes, Barack Obama was feckless, but part of the reason we got him was due to the fecklessness of George Bush, and the mismanagement of Iraq. I thought at the time the administration had a strategic plan for the Middle East, but I was wrong.

[Update a while later]

Here’s a lot more.

Space Force

That was then, this is now:

Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson asserted on Wednesday that the service is not pushing back on President Trump’s idea to create a Space Force. She offered no new details on how the process of forming a new service might unfold but insisted that this “has to be done the right way.”

I’m old enough to remember when she opposed Space Corps, let alone Space Force.

And are people really talking (again) about a Department of Space? Please, no.

Sextortion

I got two of these types of emails last night. While I have occasionally viewed a raunchy video, it was pretty clearly hinky, for numerous reasons (misspellings, fact that the password is not associated with either my email of Facebook, and I don’t even have a Messenger account, I rarely allow a webcam to see me, etc.). If it was a serious threat, they’d send a sample video.

This is a federal felony, but I find it kind of amazing that if you want to report it to the FBI, you do it by phone, instead of forwarding to an email address. The country’s in the very best of hands.

Airworthiness For Spacecraft

I missed this earlier in the week, but Mike Snead has a long essay on passenger safety over at The Space Review. It’s a useful history, that touches on many of the themes of my book, but I believe that it’s technologically premature to apply the principles to human spaceflight. Spaceflight participants (not passengers) must be aware of the risks of the varied methods of building spaceships, and accept them accordingly. No one should, at this point in history, get aboard one with the same expection of getting safely off that one does with an airliner, particularly because different people have different risk tolerances and goals. There will come a time when trips to space will be considered common carrier, on certified vehicles, but we are years from that time.