There were more than eight, though.
[Update a few minutes later]
Why is the ObamaCare roll out failing? Because Obama and his lackeys hate government.
Isn’t it obvious?
Category Archives: Technology and Society
The Article VI Problem
Copenhagen Suborbitals has discovered it.
At ISPCS last week, I was talking to another space lawyer about the need to deal with this, sooner than later (though Planetary Resources and other mining companies don’t seem to understand the problem). As I noted in the conclusion to my property-rights piece in The New Atlantis last year, The words “continuing supervision” open us up to all manner of mischief:
it is worth noting that, while the OST arguably does not prevent the recognition of property claims per se, it may prove to be a hindrance to any kind at all of large-scale space activity, not just settlement. In that regard, this is the most troublesome sentence in the entire treaty: “The activities of non-governmental entities in outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, shall require authorization and continuing supervision by the appropriate State Party to the Treaty.”
Consider the implications of the words “continuing supervision,” if taken literally. It could be argued that satisfaction of this requirement would demand that any person operating off the planet would be required to have a government minder with him at all times. Prior approval — for example, a launch license — might not be sufficient, because supervision could be argued to imply not just observation, but physical control. This wording in the treaty could imply that even the remote monitoring of private activity in space, which itself would be a significant hindrance for space settlement, would be insufficient.
With new affordable spaceflight technologies on the horizon, extensive private activity in space will be a serious possibility in the near future. If we wish to see humanity flourish in space, we have to recognize that the Outer Space Treaty is a relic of a different era. Fresh interpretations may not suffice: we may soon have to renegotiate and amend the treaty — or even completely scrap it and start from scratch — if we want not just to protect space as a mere scientific preserve but to open it for settlement as a grand new frontier. [Emphasis added]
I think my next project may be called “The Article VI Project.”
Life On A Superdense Asteroid
Making Progress On HealthCare.Gov
They seem to have updated the web site to reduce frustration. The fun begins when you click on “Apply Now.”
“The End Of Barack Obama”?
That’s the subject of a lot of spam email I’ve been getting lately. The spammers must think it’s a popular topic. 😉
An Alternate Vision For Mars Trips
Alan Boyle has a story on the current state of play for realistic concepts, something that SLS-based scenarios are not.
High-Speed Low-Speed Rail
Californians are in revolt.
What a monumentally stupid idea.
In Which I Create A Twitter Trend
This is a first for me.
@Rand_Simberg the 1st mention of the #glitchesinhistory hashtag appears on your TL. Now is Trending Topic in United States! #trndnl
— Trendinalia USA (@trendinaliaUS) October 18, 2013
Opening The Frontier
Is it a job only for government employees?
As a commenter over there says, can’t they find some astronomer other than Tyson for an opinion on this?
I’d go further, and ask why they imagine an astronomer knows anything about it.
How Congress Screwed Up Human Spaceflight
There’s a good piece over at the Washington Times:
Imagine what could be done if resources being thrown into the furnace for the Space Launch System was repurposed for technology incubation, commercial projects, or heaven forbid, actual missions. For the cost of SLS, you could afford close to 170 launches to the ISS, 55 missions to Mars with cargo or for probes, or more than 220 Falcon Heavy launches. There are opportunity costs to funding bad projects, and funding SLS costs mankind nearly 500 opportunities to actually go to space.
But it gets it wrong at the end:
When President Obama came to office, NASA was working on the Constellation Program, its most ambitious project in decades. The plan would have seen the United States return to the moon and establish a permanent base as a first step toward the manned exploration of the solar system. Fiercely lauded in the scientific and space community, it even earned the rare but ringing endorsement of Neil Armstrong. However, this highly ambitious project was clumsily canceled by the Obama administration in the name of cost-cutting in 2010 — only to be replaced with the government monstrosity known as SLS a year later.
No. A reader would imagine that Constellation was just peachy, but it was just as programmatically disastrous as SLS, slipping more than a year per year in schedule with continuously ballooning costs. It (like SLS) needed to be cancelled. The mistake of the administration was not in cancelling it, but in not working with Congress in doing so, or providing a coherent explanation of what the replacement was to be. Constellation may have been “fiercely lauded” by some in the scientific and space community, but it was just as fiercely, and justly, attacked as a barrier, rather than a mean of serious human spaceflight beyond earth orbit. It’s curious that Mr. Jacobs seems to understand the current problem without understanding the actual history that led up to it.