Category Archives: Space

Political Commentary, Space

Space Political Action Alert

Henry Vanderbilt, over at the Space Access Society, wants you to call your Congressperson:

– Call your Representative via the House Switchboard at (202) 224-3121. (If you don’t already know their name, grab an old bill and look them up by your 9-digit zipcode at http://www.house.gov/zip/ZIP2Rep.html.)

– Tell whoever answers the phone that you’d like to speak to the person who handles NASA issues for the Congressman/woman. (Ask for their voicemail if they’re not available.)

– Politely ask that staffer to: Ask your Representative to tell Chairman Wolf that he/she opposes earmarking billions to sole-source the NASA “Space Launch System”. Tell the staffer that you want to see a real competition to determine what heavy-lift booster NASA actually needs and who can build it most affordably. (If he wants to talk more about this, do your best to answer his questions.) Thank him for his time, and ring off.

For the background, follow the link.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Popular Culture, Space, Technology and Society

Just A Right-Wing Fantasy

5 Comments

No, of course Atlas Shrugged has nothing to do with life in modern America:

Ah, that must be the Anti Dog-Eat-Dog Law, or one of the Fairness Laws, or something, right? The WSJ isn’t sure what law the NLRB is talking about, either. Not only do businesses routinely relocate to find the most advantageous environment possible, states and cities compete for that business by calculating their business climate. If this has escaped the notice of the NLRB, perhaps they should get out more.

This will be an important court case, assuming it’s fought. Then again, it’s hard to feel too bad for Boeing — as Mickey says, live by crony capitalism, die by crony capitalism. Sadly, we’ve also seen this sort of corporatism/fascism wasting our space dollars as well, in addition to inhibiting innovation.

Political Commentary, Space

The Joys Of International Cooperation

31 Comments

If Mike Griffin had let Steidle continue, we’d probably have a CEV flying on an Atlas by now, and wouldn’t have to worry about potential extortion attempts like this. Deciding to end Shuttle without focusing on getting a new system in place first was a policy blunder of the highest order. Unless we simply pull out of ISS, the Russians have us over a barrel. They can continue to help Iran develop nukes and missiles with impunity, and they can continue their monopoly by obstructive behavior such as this. Bob Bigelow needs to start getting some facilities up, and NASA needs to accelerate the Boeing and SpaceX activities. Also, while I know this is controversial, I think that they should start crewing Dragon ASAP, and not wait for an abort system. And that’s what we’d be doing, if space were important.