In a Corner piece today, Jonah Goldberg discusses the humanitarian benefits that would have accrued had we forced a regime change in Moscow in 1946. But he states one of what he considers the down sides:

While the space program would have suffered without the Space Race, it seems a sure bet that the net gain of liberated human genius would more than have compensated for that.

While I agree with his post overall, I don’t agree that the “space program would have suffered.” Oh, we certainly wouldn’t have gotten to the moon as quickly, but as I argued at TCSDaily a week and a half ago, that wasn’t necessarily a good thing.

I also think that, even absent the superpower adversary of the USSR, we still would have found surveillance and communications satellites quite useful. And of course, had we removed the Stalin regime, it’s likely that we would have eventually picked up all of the German rocket team, and not just the ones that managed to escape with von Braun as the Soviets advanced. If you were a German who wanted to build rockets, given a choice between living in America, and Russia, even a free Russia, it’s seems most likely that most of them would have wanted to come here.

Jon Goff has an interesting flight safety analysis that might indicate that NASA is spending too much money on launch vehicle reliability for a lunar program.

Jesse Londin reminds us that today is the fortieth anniversary of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, for good or ill.

Not much new here for people who have been following, but Discover magazine has an interview with Burt Rutan. I don’t think that he’s the “Granddaddy of space colonization,” though. If anyone deserves that title, it’s probably Gerry O’Neill.

Ken Murphy has a first-hand report from the recent Lunar Exploration and Analysis Group Conference in Houston.

Alan Boyle has a link-rich roundup.

Space Politics has three posts, with a lot of commentary, here, here and /here.

Also, the Carnival of Space for the week is up.

[Update at 10 AM]

Keith Cowing notes that this is the most any presidential candidate has had to say about space policy in a long time (perhaps in memory). Whatever you think about what she said, that’s probably right.

Space Politics has three posts, with a lot of commentary, here, here and /here.

Also, the Carnival of Space for the week is up.

[Update at 10 AM]

Keith Cowing notes that this is the most any presidential candidate has had to say about space policy in a long time (perhaps in memory). Whatever you think about what she said, that’s probably right.

Space Politics has three posts, with a lot of commentary, here, here and /here.

Also, the Carnival of Space for the week is up.

[Update at 10 AM]

Keith Cowing notes that this is the most any presidential candidate has had to say about space policy in a long time (perhaps in memory). Whatever you think about what she said, that’s probably right.

Charles Krauthammer has some thoughts on the day after the anniversary (many of which were similar to mine, but some different), this morning. Also, check yesterday’s post and scroll to the bottom for some late-night updates, if you didn’t already.

[Update at 10 AM]

Here’s a Sputnik link I missed yesterday, from Michael Belfiore. He notes another anniversary, that I thought about writing something about, but didn’t get the time. Also, it’s a little disappointing (though not entirely unexpected) that three years later, we haven’t made more progress.