NASA and FAA administrators are having a joint press conference. Announcing that FAA will license all flights to ISS, that NASA will be responsible for crew safety for flights with NASA crew, NASA will not be involved in non-NASA flights. Irene Klotz asking why two separate sets of requirements. Bolden says that Phil McAlister may elaborate, but he anticipates that there will be human flights not NASA flights, and NASA would have no involvement. Huerta noting that requirements will be same for both NASA and non-NASA flights (not clear if he’s referring to safety or protecting public). Bolden trying to clarify in response to question from Keith Cowing, McAlister says that non-NASA missions will have no NASA involvement, and FAA will regulate only for public safety until 2015. Alan Boyle: is the MOA going to be published so we can see? How will it work for non-crew flights? New role for FAA for cargo resupply? Answer: MOU link is in press release. Nield: MOU oriented toward commercial spaceflight, cargo already licensed by FAA. For non-NASA missions, will it be like Everest, or will FAA have safety standards? Huerta reiterating all of the FAA responsibility, that do not include crew safety. FAA participation in crew selection? Current regulatory authority only over launch and entry at least until 2015. How many companies selected in CC down select (Bolden said earlier announcement in mid-July)? Two and a half, per recent agreement with Congress. Take them through 21-month process, full funders all the way, half funded as best they could. Following that, an RFP under the FAR under which any company can bid.
The Scandal Of Our Age
Victor Davis Hanson on the White House leaks. This is the biggest breach of national security since the Rosenbergs gave Stalin the bomb. And it was done deliberately for no reason other than to burnish a president’s reputation in an election year. It should have exactly the opposite effect, except the media remains complicit in it.
Speaking of which, did David Plouffe lie yesterday when Chris Wallace almost had to water board him to get a “yes or no” answer as to whether the president declassified this material so it could be fed to the press?
His answers on the administration’s handling of leaks of national security information were so rehearsed, clumsy and full of forced distractions and faux frustration that if this interview at the Fox studio had been conducted by law enforcement instead of Chris Wallace, Plouffe would have been told he was going for a ride downtown to the police station for further questioning. The administration has something to hide. Plouffe could not have been more parsed, poorly prepared or unconvincing.
So maybe some of the media will cover this properly.
Watergate
On the fortieth anniversary, five media myths.
If The Young Knew What Was Good For Them
…they’d join the Tea Party. It doesn’t help that the kleptocratic collectivists have taken over both higher and lower education.
Space Anniversary Coincidence
One day after the first Chinese woman in space is the 49th anniversary of the first woman in space, period.
The President Ignoring Immigration Law
Why conservatives should be happy with it:
…if I were offering advice to the Romney campaign (I’m on active duty so I can’t do that) I would tell them to respond to this presidential move by listing the laws that he intends to ignore as soon as he becomes president. Commenter Smart Dude says: “Call this ‘The Obama Rule’ and shove this right in the[ir] face. . . There have to be a thousand insane regulations that need not to be enforced. Start with the War on Coal and the shutting down of irrigation water to Western agriculture.” I’m sure that Romney could score many political points with this approach, particularly in the realms of spending and environmental restrictions. Additionally, there is much entertainment value in this approach, as American voters would have the fun of watching David Axelrod contort himself explaining why ignoring one set of laws is good while ignoring another set of laws is wrong.
I like it. I can certainly think of a project or two at NASA that I’d ignore congressional directives on.
Playmates In Space
Amy Shira Teitel has an amusing bit of Apollo history.
The Right Stuff
Brian Binnie (who flew the first X-Prize flight) emails:
…this e-book:
The Right Stuff: Interviews with Icons of the 1960s
, is available just in time for Father’s day. It’s the first in a series dealing with “adventurers” over the decades, many of whom are leaders in the space arena. I wrote the forward to it and the SpaceShipOne story will appear when the chronology finally gets to the 2000’s.
I met Jim via the eclectic Explorers Club and he is regular contributor to Forbes Magazine.
Cheers, Brian
You might want to check it out.
Zombies Or Vampires?
Which political party is which? Kevin Williamson answers the important questions:
Conservatives don’t see liberals as vampires — they’re zombies. The closest thing I’ve seen (or smelled) to a zombie apocalypse happened at Zuccotti Park, the shambolic squatters therein denied the ability to act upon their culinary impulses only by the manifest lack of brains available for eating. We may call liberals “bloodsuckers” and whatnot, and, as Mr. Davis notes, Rush Limbaugh did once go on an Obama-vampire riff, but he has his hematophages all wrong. Rush quotes our own venerable VDH:
Watching the tastes, the behavior, the rhetoric, the appointments, and the policy of this administration suggests to me that it is not really serious in radically altering the existing order, which it counts on despite itself. Its real goal is a sort of parasitism that assumes the survivability of the enfeebled host.
Not vampires, but leeches, ticks, bedbugs, etc. “Vampire” is the word we use for liberals when we’re trying to be nice.
Just so.
Losing The Universe
…with LOST. I have a piece up at Open Market about what a disaster ratifying the Law of the Sea Treaty could be for space development.