An appeals court is compelling the University of Arizona to (finally) release them.
The sixth anniversary of the blog post that launched Michael Mann’s lawsuit against me and Mark Steyn is coming up next week.
Category Archives: Political Commentary
“Fixing” The System
No, Democrats, your election losses don’t indicate a broken system; they indicate a broken and morally bankrupt political party.
Who Should The Nominee Be?
A roundup from legal bloggers, with three votes for Don Willett, including one from Instapundit.
[Tuesday-afternoon update]
An analysis of Amy Coney Barrett’s legal philosophy.
Based on this, I’d prefer Willett, but it looks like Trump is fascinated by the idea of nominating an actual conservative (and relatively young, for longevity, and attractive) woman. And the nomination would make the Left’s collective head explode, as well as making it more difficult for Murkowski and Collins to vote against.
[Bumped]
Laws Of Space Resources
At some point, I think it will be important to distinguish between resource utilization for personal use (living off the land), for commercial use in space (e.g., selling propellant), and terrestrial use.
Space Roundup
Politico has started to cover space (I met Bryan Bender at ISDC), and they interviewed Bridenstine (among other news, including thoughts from Rohrabacher), who seems supportive of a U.S. Space Guard. The idea seems to be getting quite a big of traction this year.
Maximum Lifespan
We still don’t know the limit. As I often say, there is no law of physics that requires either senescence or mortality. Indefinite health and life is, in theory, a solvable problem.
[Afternoon update]
A commenter points out this recent article. Yes, I’ve discussed this with Gary, and it’s currently his focus, not space. Because none of us are getting any younger. BTW, the company name is pronounced “ocean,” I think. And yes, we should be trying to get Congress to tell the FDA to recognize aging as a disease to be treated, and not simply inevitable.
Corporate Recruiters
They’re paying far too much attention to prestigious degrees.
Yes. There’s no reason to think that will give them better employees. And all this does is continue to inflate the disastrous higher-ed bubble.
[Update a few minutes later]
This seems related: Students complain that a professor’s op-ed makes them feel bad.
They Asked For Trump
A reminder from David Bernstein that evangelicals supported the immoral candidate because the Left had put the fear of un-God into them. Many of those SCOTUS victories for were Pyrrhic for them.
Bob Zimmerman
He’s doing his annual fundraiser. He does good stuff.
I might do this myself, but I don’t feel like I’ve been doing quality blogging recently. Too busy with other stuff, some of which is remunerative.
JWST
We expected this yesterday, but here it is:
Following an Independent Review Board report on the James Webb Space Telescope project, NASA has announced a further delay to the telescope’s anticipated launch. Coming just three months after a year-long delay to 2020, NASA now says the telescope will not be ready to launch until 2021 at the earliest and that the project will breach its $8.8 billion USD cost cap.
The cited mismanagement at NG and NASA is just staggering. The new overrun is about the amount that it was supposed to cost, in total, originally. What a programmatic disaster.
I hereby rename JWST the Jeebus Wept Sunkcost Trap
— SafeNotAnOption (@SafeNotAnOption) June 27, 2018
[Update after noon]
Here’s the story from Jeff Foust.
[Update a while later]
This can never be allowed to happen again…. The good news is that it does not have to. On Orbit Assembly transcends the limitations around building a big telescope on the ground, shaking the hell out of it for 10 minutes, then deploying it autonomously without fail. https://t.co/lPmq4UgdVi
— Dennis Wingo (@wingod) June 27, 2018
[Thursday-morning update]
Here‘s Marina Koren’s take:
A wiring error caused workers to apply too much voltage to the spacecraft’s pressure transducers, severely damaging them. And during an acoustics test, which examines whether hardware can survive the loud sounds of launch, the fasteners designed to hold the sun shield together came loose. The incident scattered 70 bolts, and engineers scrambled to find them. They’re still looking for a few. “We’re really close to finding every one of the pieces,” Zerbuchen said.
These three errors alone resulted in a schedule delay of about 1.5 years and $600 million, Young said.
I think that’s about Northrop Grumman’s annual net income. If I were NASA, I’d tell them that if they ever want another NASA contract, they’ll eat it themselves.
[Update a while later]
Alex Witze has more, over at Nature.