Why you’re not working on one.
With bonus quotes from my former colleague at Aerospace, Bill Ailor.
I’m surprised the article didn’t mention the B612 Foundation.
Category Archives: Technology and Society
Solar Geoengineering
A quick and easy way to stop global warming?
It would certainly be cheaper than carbon reduction, but it’s not clear if it would work, or what the other side effects might be. And of course, if it’s even necessary.
But if it really is a problem, schemes like this, or space-based ones, make a lot more sense than screwing up the global economy.
Gun Control, Mental Health And Public Safety
A requested letter to Ted Cruz:
The United States is at something of a crossroads here: we can remain focused on gun control, or we can look at the root cause of not only the random acts of mass murder, but many other serious social maladies. The deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill has played a destructive role not only with respect to crime, but also with the degradation of urban life, and with the barbarous degradation of mentally ill people, who are a large fraction of the homeless in our country.[11]
Deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill is the root cause of most of these shocking acts of mass murder, and the much more common but less publicized murders that happen every day in America, which very seldom involve high-capacity magazines or scary looking black rifles.
Pretending that gun control is going to have much of an impact on this is like putting a Band-Aid on an arm with a severed artery. It is only a short-term solution, because it covers up a deeper problem. It is time to recognize and solve the root problem.
Gun control isn’t about guns, or public safety. It’s about control.
[Update later morning]
Randy Barnett has a letter for Ted, too, as does Dave Kopel.
Thoughts On Gun Control
Too much common sense from Robert Levy, so the politicians won’t pay any attention.
[Update a couple minutes later]
The public disapproves of Obama’s gun policies by 54-42%. Actually, they seem to disapprove of almost all of his policies. Think in particular about the 2-1 opposition to his deficit policy as he spouts his lies tonight. There was no majority who voted for Barack Obama. Those who put him over the top were voting against the demon Romney, per the Obama campaign strategy.
[Update a few minutes later]
This seems related: the war on drugs, overcriminalization and militarized police raids.
Commercial Space Transportation Regulation
In my book, here’s one of my recommendations in the conclusion:
The Office of Commercial Space Transportation (OCST), currently located within FAA and often referred to by its internal code designation as FAA-AST, should be taken from under the FAA administrator and reconstituted as a separate agency of the DOT, reporting directly to the Secretary of Transportation as do normal DOT agencies. The OCST was originally constituted as a special office within the Office of the Secretary of Transportation as an interim measure under President Reagan’s executive order of 1983, codified by subsequent legislation in 1984. It was moved under the FAA early in the Clinton administration as a result of Vice President Gore’s “streamlining government” initiative. Giving it independent status would both elevate the national importance of space transportation, and remove it from the routine-transportation, common-carrier-oriented safety environment of the FAA, which (as previously mentioned) lost its role in the promotion of the aviation industry in the wake of the ValuJet crash in the late nineties. Additionally, consideration should be given to relocating to such an agency various routine space-transportation-related infrastructure and operational responsibilities located in other agencies where they are peripheral to those agencies’ main purpose and function and often suffer from inattention and low priorities.
Dana Rohrabacher has read a draft, and I suspect that’s partially what’s behind this:
Rohrabacher said that it remained vital that FAA recognize that commercial spaceflight is still an emerging industry and not over-regulate it. He noted that the Office of Commercial Space Transportation was originally placed directly under the Secretary of Transportation, and only later moved to the FAA. “The culture of the FAA is based on a mandate to protect passenger safety,” he said, but argued that commercial spaceflight, being far less mature than aviation, requires a different regulatory philosophy. “That’s a very different mandate and a very different approach, but it’s necessary for us to recognize that if we are to be successful in moving the industry forward.”
Rohrabacher said that FAA was, for the time being, doing a good job treating aviation and spaceflight differently, but warned he would seek action to move the office out of the FAA should the situation change. “Ultimately, if that proves too difficult for the FAA to reconcile, we may end up having to move this whole job back to the office of the Secretary of Transportation.”
Sounds good to me.
As a side note, the congressman has provided me with a book blurb:
Mr. Simberg makes the compelling case that great deeds and great rewards require great risks, but NASA and my colleagues in Congress have become so risk averse in the arena of human spaceflight that we are incapable of accomplishing great deeds. America must have the stomach to let explorers and settlers willfully take on the kinds of risk necessary for opening the frontier of space to settlement under the rule of law. If we continue to overvalue that risk, or prohibit those who would willfully undertake it, then other nations, with no respect for human life, will be more than happy to fill that void. Left unchecked, the well-meaning, but misguided, group that promotes “safety at all cost” will continue to establish hard ceilings that we can’t break through, require the expense of immense amounts of time and money, and will ultimately cost us our preeminence in space. We must not cede the high ground of space to those who do not believe in freedom. And we must respect the freedom of those individuals who are willing to put it all on the line to head over that next hill – even when that hill is in space. Mr. Simberg’s book Safe Is Not An Option handles this sensitive issue with skill, grace, and tremendous insight.
Rep. Dana Rohrabacher
Vice Chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology; and former Chairman of the Space Subcommittee
I have several others as well, which I’ll put up at the book’s web site, perhaps this week.
Ed Markey
…and his idiotic war on roller coasters.
America’s Car Culture
Four reasons it’s dead or dying.
Amen especially to number two. I was looking in the shop manual for what’s involved in tuning our BMW 323i, and I couldn’t see that there was anything I can do to it other than changing plugs. And there’s just no room to work under the hood. I remember when I was a kid, you could almost walk around in the engine compartments.
Asteroids
Greg Bear says that we’re too complacent. I agree.
[Update a few minutes later]
Earth is going to get a close shave next week.
Earth-Like Exoplanets
Right next door?
Maybe it’s more motivation to develop interstellar propulsion, but we’re still a long way from it, and thirteen light years is still a long way away.
More On Toxic Greenery
Really, someone should use this data to get rid of the idiotic bans on plastic bags.
Warning of disease may seem like an over-the-top scare tactic, but research suggests there’s more than anecdote behind this industry talking point. In a 2011 study, four researchers examined reusable bags in California and Arizona and found that 51 percent of them contained coliform bacteria. The problem appears to be the habits of the reusers. Seventy-five percent said they keep meat and vegetables in the same bag. When bags were stored in hot car trunks for two hours, the bacteria grew tenfold.
That study also found, happily, that washing the bags eliminated 99.9 percent of the bacteria. It undercut even that good news, though, by finding that 97 percent of people reported that they never wash their bags.
They’ll take my plastic bags away from my cold, dead fingers.
[Update late morning]
The San Francisco bag ban kills five people a year.
If we could save just one child’s life…