Category Archives: Technology and Society

That Dress, Twenty Years On

On the anniversary, my fellow defendant Mark Steyn remembers the last time a president was (entirely justifiably) impeached.

And as I typed this, I just realized that I forgot to commemorate the sixth anniversary of that infamous Blog Post which resulted in the never-ending lawsuit against me, CEI, National Review, and Mark (though he is now eager to go to trial having made a lot of money selling a book against the plaintiff). And it’s been over two years since our request for an en banc appeal, with no ruling from the DC Circuit.

Stratolaunch

A history, as it approaches first air under the gear. As I noted in an email to the person who sent me the link:

“Stratolaunch has never made any sense to me as a business. Gary [Hudson]’s theory is that it’s the Glomar Explorer of space: a civilian cover for a black operation (in this case, perhaps as an X-37 launcher capable of single-orbit rendezvous). But it seems nutty to me to make your business dependent on a single carrier aircraft. Orbital got away with it with the Tri-Star but at least there they could have gone to the boneyard for another one if they’d lost it. Look how much time it’s taken to even do taxi tests with a single vehicle. And they only this week announced (again) their plans for the orbital launcher, now not to fly until 2022, over a decade after that press conference.”

I also think that Allen placed entirely too much faith in Burt, who is an aviation genius, but not necessarily a space guy.

Rogozin

He’s whining about SpaceX’s prices. Maybe he should get a trampoline.

And this is amusing:

Due to its geography, Russia is largely unable to make Falcon-style reusable boosters that would make vertical powered descent to a movable platform at sea, and so it has to follow an alternate path sticking to horizontal landings or relying on parachutes, he said.

Yes, because they couldn’t possibly land vertically down range, where they currently dump their expended first stages.

The First Amendment

…and the lesson of Robespierre:

Once we stop treating the Internet as just a medium like newsprint and start treating Internet hosting companies as publishers, we make them vulnerable to oppressors and we can be sure that some of them will not have what we see as the “public good” in mind.

This is the lesson of Robespierre: once you establish that something may be done for you, you establish that it can be done to you.

Similarly, as Barry Goldwater and others have said, a government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take it all away.