I’ll be talking to David Livingston this afternoon at 2 PM PDT about my space safety project, which seems to be turning into a small book, that I hope to publish this month.
[Update mid-afternoon]
I’ll be on in ten minutes or so.
[Bumped]
[Early evening update]
Well, that was in interesting discussion. It went on for a couple hours. The most important thing to me was that David brought up one of the very best case studies for my thesis — the Hubble decision. I’m going to incorporate it into the book (yes, I’ve decided to just call it a book). This is partly just a reminder for me to do so…
[Evening update]
It’s probably worth repeating this video from the space teddy bears. Or dogs. Or whatever.
Between 1949, when the U.S. Navy began deploying jets on a large scale, and 1988, when the combined Navy/Marine Corps aircraft accident rate achieved U.S. Air Force levels, the Navy and Marine Corps lost almost 12,000 aircraft and more than 8,500 aircrew.
Emphasis mine. That’s accidents, not combat. And what they mean by getting the rate to Air Force levels, is reducing it to that rate. In other words, those are the casualties of learning how to fly combat-proficient aircraft from carriers, and it didn’t really occur until the introduction of the F/A-18 Hornet.
In Silent Spring, Carson crafted a passionate denunciation of modern technology that drives environmentalist ideology today. At its heart is this belief: Nature is beneficent, stable, and even a source of moral good; humanity is arrogant, heedless, and often the source of moral evil. Rachel Carson, more than any other person, is responsible for the politicized science that afflicts our public policy debates today.
This isn’t exactly a new question. The Space Studies Institute has been thinking about it for a third of a century. And of course, one always finds the inevitable “it’s obvious that the first colony should be on Mars” comment.
California isn’t just a basket case, it’s a proselytizing basket case, with its environmental zealots, community organizers, and wishful economic thinkers aggressively selling their ideas to other states and to the federal government. As Laer demonstrates, while the recession is slowing the other forty-nine states from buying into California’s governing philosophy, the Obama government is an enthusiastic supporter. Another four years of Obama, and California won’t be the only bankrupt crazy place in America.
…Crazifornia describes a dysfunctional state, one that can best be summed up as a banana republic governed, not by oligarchs, but by a toxic mix of environmental fascists, greedy unions, corrupt or ideology-driven legislators, and all-powerful bureaucrats. But before you get too angry at these jackals, perhaps you should reserve your wrath for the ones who truly deserve it: the California voters.
I fear the state is lost. I just hope we can contain the infection.