I have an op-ed up at USA Today, blasting Congress on its absurd policies and attitudes toward human spaceflight.
Category Archives: War Commentary
A Space-Socialist Republican
Greg Autry is sort of singing my tune:
If NASA were compelled to “downselect” Commercial Crew to a single vendor, Washington power politics would clearly favor Boeing’s CST-100 capsule, a luxurious spacecraft, that while it has never flown, is on track for some unmanned flights to the ISS in about three years. This leisurely development schedule puts no pressure on SLS. While it is surely coincidently that both the SLS and CST-100 programs are headquartered in Houston, we are lucky to have Messrs. La Branche and Culberson standing between us and the utter chaos of free market competition.
…Frankly, DragonRider could fly to the ISS next month if it were subject to the same expectations of safety as NASA’s Space Shuttle. A truly conservative response to Mr. Rogozin would be to announce that the United States is ready to move a DragonRider launch forward without further testing, send eight Navy Seals to the ISS and “liberate” our space station from Russia’s state capitalist squatters.
Well, I wouldn’t go quite that far. But that’s Greg.
Merde Just Got Real
Rogozin is cutting off sales of RD-180s, and threatening to end ISS participation in 2020.
The former is much more concerning than the latter. 2020 is a long way off, and we have time to resolve that one way or the other. But Atlas V is out of business in a couple years if they don’t come up with a solution. Which is bad news for Boeing and Sierra Nevada in terms of commercial crew.
Obama’s Presidency
The day it died:
Let us now return to Parshall’s observation that ”all military failures fall into three basic categories: failure to learn from the past, failure to anticipate what the future may bring, and failure to adapt to the immediate circumstances on the battlefield.” It’s possible that Obama did exactly that on the night of September 11, 2012. He didn’t see the double cross coming; he had no Plan B for Syria, for al-Qaeda, having bet the farm on Plan A and he covered failure up.
He went and committed all three categories of failure. ”Finally, at the apex of failure stand those rare events when all three basic failures occur simultaneously-an event known as catastrophic failure. In such an occurrence, the result is usually a disaster of such scope that recovery is impossible.”
And now he’s living with the consequences of having to pursue a strategic assumption he knows is wrong but does not dare denounce.
It’s going to look worse and worse as time goes on.
The Kidnapped Girls In Nigeria
…may have already been genitally mutilated.
Sadly, that’s the way to bet. But don’t call them Islamic terrorists! That will just make them even more terroristy!
Just keep up the #hashtag bombardment. That’ll learn ’em.
Rerunning 1998?
I think there’s a flaw in Mickey’s theory:
I’m not suggesting the White House is intentionally provoking Republicans over Benghazi, the better to produce counterproductive overreach. OK, sorry. I’m totally suggesting the White House is intentionally provoking Republicans over Benghazi. It’s not like this is something the White House hasn’t been accused of before. Remember the “birther” controversy, where Obama delayed releasing his birth certificate for years as the conservative fringe wound themselves up in greater and greater knots of paranoia? ’Look, what a bunch of crazies” was Obamas implicit message then. That may be his message again. Sure beats “The debate is over.”
The problem is that (as we were told ad infinitum by Democrat partisans), the Clinton scandal was “just about sex.” Here the lies (and continued stonewalling) are about four dead Americans, killed by administration ineptitude.
If You Like Your Un-Nuked Country
…you can keep your un-nuked country. Period:
“The US delegation reaffirmed our commitment to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon,” said a White House statement released after talks in Jerusalem between Rice, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and senior officials from both sides.
“The delegations held thorough consultations on all aspects of the challenge posed by Iran, and pledged to continue the unprecedented coordination between the United States and Israel,” it added.”
I’m sure that Israel feels much more secure now.
North Korea
Is China finally getting fed up?
Let’s hope.
The Democrat’s Response To Benghazi
The four “D”s: deny, delay, disrupt, discredit.
Trey Gowdy is in for a rough ride, but I think he knows that.
Don’t Punish The Space Industry
Space News is concerned about collateral damage from Russian sanctions.