A movie review. That rocket looks a heckuva lot like a V-2, to my eye.
Category Archives: Space
Layers Of Fact Checkers And Editors
There’s kind of a weird editorial by Joshua Green over at the Boston Globe today. I don’t understand the title (Takeoff?), and he doesn’t seem to know the name of either the senior senator from Florida or the NASA administrator. And this kind of statement is always sort of annoying:
The real shock came in January, when President Obama killed its successor, Project Constellation, which aimed to return Americans to the moon by 2020.
What does it mean, to call Constellation the Shuttle’s “successor”? I guess it is, in the sense that it was the next human spaceflight program that would absorb all of the NASA personnel that were working Shuttle, but it’s not like it actually replaces the Shuttle in any functional sense, other than the ability to get crew to and from LEO. And then we have the usual dumb comments from people like Tom Delay:
Critics reply that killing Constellation and reorienting NASA is foolish and costly. “The innovations that have come out of the space program are phenomenal,’’ DeLay said. “With our failing manufacturing base, it is extremely important for our economy to maintain them.’’ Private space flight has shown promise, but it will be years before a commercial company can safely launch astronauts into space. Lacking the capacity to send US astronauts to the International Space Station, we’ll soon pay Russia to ferry them there, which won’t be cheap.
What “innovations” were going to come out of Constellation? The whole point of the project was to avoid innovation, with its associated technical risk. And I suppose that it’s technically true that it will be “years” before a commercial company can safely launch astronauts into space. But it won’t be as many “years” as it would have been with Ares/Orion. There’s no reason that the number of years need be more than two or three, except for resistance from Congress to fund it for dumb reasons like this:
…the loudest complaint regards “American greatness’’ — the idea that the willing forfeiture of our leadership in space amounts to a kind of moral trespass that will cede to nations like China and India the next great strides in science and technology.
This is mindless. We aren’t “forfeiting our leadership in space” by sensibly having private companies perform the mundane task of getting astronauts to and from there, half a century after the dawn of the manned space age. And China and India are both a long way from doing anything that will vault them ahead of us (and even longer, if we follow the new course instead of the moribund Constellation).
Where his critics have a point is in arguing that NASA lacks a clear mission. Without a directive and funding, talk of visiting Mars or an asteroid is grandiose but empty.
While the funding is lacking, due to squabbling on the Hill, there is a directive — to develop the technologies needed to make going beyond earth orbit affordable. But for people who look at the world through Apollo-colored glasses, unless it has a destination and date and unaffordably huge rocket (i.e., a five-year plan for the celestial crops), it’s not a real space program.
Grazing Dinosaurs
Wow. Am I unimpressed with ESA’s plans for a new rocket:
Multiple designs for a two- or three-stage rocket with cryogenic, solid-fueled and methane/oxygen main stages will be studied not only for their performance, but also for their long-term operating costs.
While no decision has been made, the early design work will focus on a vehicle that would add or subtract strap-on boosters to lift satellites weighing as little as 3,000 kilograms and as much as 7,500 kilograms into geostationary transfer orbit, the destination of most telecommunications satellites.
Unlike the current Ariane 5, the next-generation launcher would, under the preliminary designs being investigated, launch one satellite at a time into geostationary orbit, not two as typically is the case with the current Ariane 5.
And this huge breakthrough in launch technology will be available in only fifteen years.
Between 1945 and 1960, we went from the DC-3 to the 7407. Between 1955 and 1970, we went from Aerobees to moon landings. And between now and 2025, the Europeans want to develop yet another expendable rocket. I guess they learned the lesson of the Shuttle. It was the wrong lesson, but at least they learned a lesson, right?
This Isn’t Going Away
Michelle Malkin has a collection of new NASA logos.
[Update a while later]
More thoughts from Jay Nordlinger:
say that, back in the 2008 campaign, you had remarked, “If Obama becomes president, he will demand that NASA devote itself to making Muslims feel good about their contributions to science.” You would have been called the worst and wildest kind of right-winger.
…
This administration is simply beyond parody. Apologizing to Communist China for Arizona’s immigration laws; directing NASA to address itself to Muslim self-esteem . . . Unbelievable.
I wish it were.
[Update a few minutes later]
One giant leap backward:
According to contemporary liberalism, the government is the control room of society, where problems get solved, where institutions get their marching orders, where the oceans are commanded to stop rising. Each institution must subscribe to the progressive vision: All oars must pull as one. We are all in it together. We can do it all, if we all work together. Yes, we can.
In my book, Liberal Fascism, I called this phenomenon the “liberal Gleichschaltung.” Gleichschaltung is a German word (in case you couldn’t have guessed) borrowed from electrical engineering. It means “coordination.” The German National Socialists (Nazis) used the concept to get every institution to sing from the same hymnal. If a fraternity or business embraced Nazism, it could stay “independent.” If it rejected Nazism, it was crushed or bent to the state’s ideology. Meanwhile, every branch of government was charged with not merely doing its job but advancing the official state ideology.
Now, contemporary liberalism is not an evil ideology. Its intentions aren’t evil or even fruitfully comparable to Hitlerism. But there is a liberal Gleichschaltung all the same. Every institution must be on the same page. Every agency must advance the liberal agenda.
And unfortunately, it’s true in both Republican and Democrat administrations. The federal bureaucracy is eternal, and intrinsically incented to promote itself, growing like a cancer on the body civitas. It’s one of the reasons that NASA’s problems are so intractable. In the sixties, it had an essential mission, with an essentially unlimited budget, and it was a young agency that hadn’t had time to accrue the barnacles. It’s not really fixable four decades later. We need a fresh start.
[Update a while later]
More thoughts on the flawed thought processes of “liberals” (which occurred to me yesterday as well):
Of course, it’s entirely possible (pace Bernard Lewis) that the Muslim world does not lack for self-esteem on the matter of science or anything else. Certainly scientific know-how has not been lacking in nuclear-armed Pakistan, or (would-be) nuclear Iran. Besides, hasn’t Mr. Obama heard? The whole self-esteem myth has been exploded. Though millions of tax dollars and God only knows how many wasted instructional hours have gone toward making American kids think they are really, really special, it turns out that there is zero correlation between such drilled self-esteem and academic performance.
I never noticed that bullies had low self esteem. It seemed pretty clear to me that their self esteem was far too high.
To treat the Muslim world as a vast ocean of African Americans in need of respect and encouragement from us is both arrogant and incredibly solipsistic. In fact, large swaths of the Muslim world feel inexpressibly superior to us — particularly morally and spiritually. Until cold terror forced them to accept American servicemen on their soil, the Saudis kept “infidel” pollution to the barest minimum in the home of the prophet. That wasn’t an expression of inferiority. Osama bin Laden boasted in 2000 that he had defeated the Soviet Empire and that it would be a small matter to defeat the American one. Again, he may have been deluded, but he was not a candidate for assertiveness training. Nearly every Muslim child is instructed that his is the true faith, superior in every way to the errors that came before — Judaism and Christianity — and infinitely above paganism or atheism. Jihadis are taught that their shining pure religion requires no less than the mass murder of infidels and unbelievers.
It might just be that Muslim self-confidence is more dangerous to us than imagined Muslim feelings of inadequacy.
Yup. Even if NASA were capable of making Muslims feel better about themselves, it might be worse than useless to do so — it could be quite counterproductive, particularly if it causes them to hold us all the more in contempt. As I said in comments at PJM yesterday:
If even one young hot-head thinks America isn’t so bad after hearing this interview, and then chooses not to enlist in al-Qaeda, then American lives will have been saved.
Not if for each one hot-head who thinks that, ten think that we’re displaying weakness and cultural flaccidity. Recall what bin Laden said about the weak horse and the strong horse. The administration may think that it’s pursuing smart diplomacy, but all it’s really doing is sowing contempt for us among many in that culture. They don’t lack self esteem. They lack esteem for non-Muslims. And with this kind of nonsense, we give them good reason to.
This is of a piece with other myths about terrorism — that it is caused by poverty, or hopelessness. But many are poor in many countries, and don’t murder others in the name of their god. And what drives the terrorism of the “Palestinians” isn’t hopelessness, but hopefullness — the hope that with terror, they can force the Israelis to a settlement (and eventually out of the Middle East altogether).
This is what happens when you let academics run foreign policy.
[Update a while later]
Greg Gutfeld weighs in:
According to a piece by Byron York, Obama ordered NASA administrator Charles Bolden to focus on three goals – inspire brats to study science and math, expand international relations (which only works when hookers are involved), and help Muslims “feel good about their historic contribution to science, math, and engineering”. These goals, as Hot Air notes – have nothing to do with space.
But they are spacey.
And so our President has put feelings before frontiers. Which is a mistake, because you can’t inspire anyone – kids or Muslims – without actually doing something. And if space exploration is no longer about space exploration, what exactly is it?
Crap.
But you know what it should be about?
Blowing up crap. Fact is, we love movies like Star Wars, Star Trek and Star Jones – not for their emotion, but for their annihilation. In short: we need to weaponize space. Personally, I can’t think of a better way to excite a kid than giving him the chance to obliterate Pandora.
I hate those people.
And if you disagree with him, you’re a homophobic giant smurf.
[Afternoon update]
You know what isn’t a Muslim problem? A lack of space technology. Or self esteem.
This is stupid on multiple levels.
Quote Of The Week
When SpaceX suffers delays, they are criticised as being immature. When the Shuttle has a delay, it is a vital contribution to manned spaceflight.
Your congress at work.
An Interesting Google Ad
This looks like an interesting course:
Have you ever wondered: How do various scholarly discourses—cosmology, geology, anthropology, biology, history—fit together?
Big History answers that question by weaving a single story from a variety of scholarly disciplines. Like traditional creation stories told by the world’s great religions and mythologies, Big History provides a map of our place in space and time. But it does so using the insights and knowledge of modern science, as synthesized by a renowned historian.
This is a story scholars have been able to tell only since the middle of the last century, thanks to the development of new dating techniques in the mid-1900s. As Professor Christian explains, this story will continue to grow and change as scientists and historians accumulate new knowledge about our shared past.
I and others actually tried to condense this story down to something that can be told in forty-five minutes or so at the dinner table, which we tell on Moon Day (coming up two weeks from today, on the forty-first anniversary of the lunar landing).
What was really interesting, though (and what mindless stereotypers on the left will find boggling) was that it was a Google ad at National Review…
Muslim Self Esteem
I have some thoughts on the NASA administrator’s recent comments over at PJM this morning.
[Update a while later]
I see that (as is usually the case) most of the commenters over there can’t be bothered to read or comprehend what I wrote, but instead just take it as an opportunity to vent on a public bulletin board.
[Update a while later]
More thoughts from Victor Davis Hanson. Bottom line:
We all know that Bolden means well and wishes to get his agency on board with President Obama’s larger plan to create a kinder and gentler image to the Muslim world in order to lessen world tension and reduce terrorist attacks against the U.S. Unfortunately, world tensions are rising, and 2009 saw the most foiled terrorist attempts against the U.S. mainland since 2001, so one can wonder about the efficacy of these approaches, or even worry that they are having the opposite effect of what they intend. But the real problem with using NASA as an arm of the State Department’s current politically correct agenda is that it is supposed to have other things to do.
What’s really stupid is that it is doing other things, and good ones, but idiocy like this wipes it off the media map.
[Update mid morning]
Mike Griffin weighs in:
“NASA was chartered by the 1958 Space Act to develop the arts and sciences of flight in the atmosphere and in space and to go where those technologies will allow us to go,” Griffin said in an interview Tuesday. “That’s what NASA does for the country. It is a perversion of NASA’s purpose to conduct activities in order to make the Muslim world feel good about its contributions to science and mathematics.”
Griffin calls NASA’s new mission, outlined by space agency administrator Charles Bolden in an interview with the al-Jazeera news agency, “very bad policy for NASA.” As for NASA’s core mission of space exploration, Griffin points out that it has been reaffirmed many times over the years, most recently in 2005, when a Republican Congress passed authorizing legislation, and in 2008, when a Democratic Congress did the same thing.
Too bad that you didn’t take NASA’s core mission seriously, Mike. Instead, you completely ignored the recommendations of the Aldridge Commission and the CE&I contractors, and decided to make NASA’s core mission on-the-job training for rocket designers at Marshall, and building an unnecessary new rocket that didn’t even get the crew all the way to earth orbit without help from the crew module.
“NASA has been for 50 years above politics, and for 50 years, NASA has been focused by one president or another on space exploration,” Griffin says. “Some presidents have championed it more strongly than others, and it is regrettable that none have championed it as strongly as President Kennedy.
Oh, please. NASA has been above politics for fifty years? NASA has been ninety percent politics since its inception. It’s a friggin’ government agency. And Kennedy didn’t champion space exploration — he championed beating the Soviets to the moon in a battle in the Cold War. He told his own administrator that he didn’t care about space.
For all his unhappiness with the new policy, Griffin says blame for the situation does not belong with NASA administrator Charles Bolden, whom Griffin calls “one of the best human beings you will find.” “When I see reports in the media excoriating Charlie for this position, that blame is misplaced,” Griffin says. “It belongs with the administration. That is where policy for NASA is set. The NASA administrator does not set policy for NASA, the administrator carries it out.”
Really? Well, gee, Mike, maybe if you’d carried out the Bush policy, instead of perverting it yourself, the agency wouldn’t be in such a mess now.
What Isn’t Wrong…?
Call me crazy, but it doesn’t look to me like Islam has any self esteem issues at all, let alone ones that NASA is likely to do anything about.
(For those who have been emailing me asking me what I think of Charlie Bolden’s excellent diplomatic adventure. I’ll have a lot more thoughts over at Pajamas Media later.)
It Just Makes You Want To Cry
Here we go again. No one at this American Thinker piece, neither the author or any of the commenters, has clue one about the new policy:
Now, with the Obama administration’s new “plan” for NASA effectively ending nationally funded human spaceflight, we drop a torch others are grabbing.
Where do they come up with this nonsense? How can one sanely characterize a policy that extends ISS until at least the end of the decade, and that has billions of dollars budgeted to buy crew services, as “ending nationally funded human spaceflight”?
NASA has long been planning to cancel the Shuttle program, which is understandable, considering budget constraints and the priority of the Constellation program. But to cancel both programs leaves the U.S. with no viable human space transport. The International Space Station, which represents a $100-billion investment by U.S. taxpayers, will be unreachable by scientists and astronauts from the U.S. without hitching a ride on Russian or Chinese space transport. This is unacceptable.
Or from commercial American services, which will be available much sooner than Ares/Orion. And later, he finally gets around to discussing this:
With the ending of the Constellation program, there are no future human missions for the U.S., except those made possible in commercial spaceflight. While commercial spaceflight is tremendous in its future implications, it will progress only in areas that have demonstrated a possible fiscal return…and space operations are so expensive and difficult that it is highly unlikely that any true exploration would occur. Commercial space flight is space exploitation, not space exploration. For the foreseeable future, an entity like NASA — which is nationally funded and not constrained by profits and losses — and a project such as Constellation is the best way to extend our reach into and knowledge of space. Robotic missions are all well and good for certain applications, but one does not learn anything about putting humans in space by putting robotic vehicles in space.
Sigh…
Where to start?
Look. We are simply transitioning from a mode in which NASA develops and operates its own earth-to-orbit vehicles to spec, to one in which it purchases transportation services to LEO for crew from private providers, as it has been doing for years for satellites and probes. No one said that NASA was “getting out of the planetary exploration business” when it launched LRO and LCROSS on a commercial Atlas, and if they had they would have rightly been considered insane. Why is it any different for astronauts?
Exploration starts when we get into LEO, not at Cape Canaveral.
And you cannot simultaneously know anything about Constellation and state that it is “the best way to extend our reach into and knowledge of space.” Constellation was a fiscal disaster waiting to happen. It was unaffordable both in terms of its development costs, and its operational costs. There are many better ways to accomplish that goal. The new policy is one of them.
Jeebus crow.
Lack Of Progress
A Russian robotic vehicle seems to be out of control, and unable to dock with the ISS. Probably a stuck or miscommanded thruster. Between this and the two Soyuz landing anomalies, I wonder if the Russian space program is falling apart? If so, it’s potentially bad news for ISS. We need to get a fire lit under the commercial crew and COTS programs.