Business, Economics, Political Commentary, Space

Space-Policy Stupidity On Stilts

3 Comments

Doug Mohney wonders why the Texas congressional delegation seems to have its collective head up its fundament:

Two problems exist for the Congressional delegation from Texas if they continue to push SLS funding at the expense of fully funding NASA Commercial Crew program. First, it would appear that they advocate a policy that has the United States continue to purchase transport to ISS from Russia until SLS is built — rather than “insourcing” the dollars and work to American companies.

Second, if Russia’s spotty track record with the pieces to its manned launch system continues, a Soyuz failure leaving the $100 billion space station unmanned and untended — or worse, deorbited — could have a significant impact on the 15,000 employees employed at Houston’s Johnson Space Flight Center (JSC). If ISS goes down, there’s no need to have a Mission Control Center for its operations or the many other NASA employees and contractors supporting space station operations.

SLS mostly benefits Alabama, Florida and Utah — there is very little in it for Texas, which just makes this all the more stupid.

Education, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Social Commentary

The Climate Fraud

8 Comments

Ross Kaminsky called it:

If those climate alarmists who went after me (for what I said explicitly in my note was “my speculation”) had any honor, they would not just apologize, but feel some guilt for being associated with the religion of climate change whose high priests could sink to identity theft because they feel “frustration” at not being able to get the rest of the country to join their rent-seeking, anti-human cult.

In the meantime, I take some satisfaction in believing, though I’ll never know for sure, that my article gave Mr. Gleick some incentive to confess, before the FBI agent came to his door. Or perhaps he just didn’t want to spend the money on a new (non-Epson) scanner.

Note also the comments from Judith Curry, who has been one of the few people in the climate community actually acting like a scientist.

[Update a few minutes later]

The Johann Hari of climate “science.”

Kind of funny the sort of people they’ll hand out “Genius Awards” to.

[Update a couple minutes later]

But it was only a first offense: Gleick has apparently been removed from the AGU Task Force on Scientific Ethics. Gee, I’d have thought he’d be a poster boy.

[Update a few minutes later]

Related: Don’t know much about science books.

[Update a while later]

In apologizing, Gleick blames his victims:

Once you begin to believe that the success of the Cause justifies deceit and theft, how long until you begin making excuses for other crimes committed on behalf of the Cause? I do not accuse Peter Gleick and his fellow fanatics of any Stalinist ambitions, but when we see them engaged in Stalinist methods — publishing forged documents to smear their critics – aren’t we justified in suspecting that they are not otherwise honest?

Actually, I suspect that some of them harbor Stalinist ambitions (e.g., Holdren). What a piece of work this guy is.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Space

Don’t Know Much About Launch Technology

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Jonathan Coopersmith says that both Romney and Gingrich get it wrong on space policy. But he’s a little confused himself:

Rockets cost so much because most of their weight is fuel. Usually 1 percent or less of launch weight is the actual payload. Nor are rockets fully reliable. To launch a communications satellite into geosynchronous orbit demands an insurance premium of 10 percent or more for a single one-way trip! Contrast that to the premium for your car insurance.

Yet rockets have launched every satellite and space probe since Sputnik in 1957. The entire space infrastructure, governmental and private, has grown around building and launching rockets. What rockets have not and cannot do is make the cost of reaching orbit low enough that Gingrich’s lunar base could pass Romney’s financial test.

To truly encourage private enterprise in space a radical reduction of the cost to reach orbit must become a national priority. Several promising technologies, such as beamed energy propulsion and space elevators, could reduce the cost of entering space from $10,000 to as low as $100 a pound, radically changing the economics of spaceflight.

Ummmm…no. Rockets don’t cost so much because most of their weight is fuel. As Elon notes, the propellant costs for a Falcon 9 are less than half a percent of the total flight costs, and he expects to be able to get to a hundred dollars a pound of payload with the Falcon Heavy if he can get the flight rate up.

Coopersmith is right that we need to get launch costs down, and it’s probably worth spending some R&D on advanced technologies, but we don’t need them to get to a hundred dollars a pound. All we need are reusable vehicles operating at high flight rates.

General Science, Humor, Media Criticism

“Recent” Is Apparently Relative

11 Comments

I love this headline: “Moon’s Scarred Crust Hints at Recent Activity, Scientists Say.”

Yes, it was only fifty million years ago. Seems like it was only yesterday. They grow up so fast.

It reminds me of the joke about the guy nodding off at the lecture on the sun. “What?! When did you say it would expand into a red giant?” “I said a couple billion years.” “Oh, that’s a relief. I thought you said a couple million.”

Culinary, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society

Appalling Nutritional Ignorance Among Doctors

18 Comments

…on parade:

The event, which sold out all 4,000 tickets in 25 minutes, offers something to make every swine lover swoon: unlimited bacon samples, a bacon-eating contest, educational lectures, a bacon-themed songwriting contest and crowning of a new bacon queen. Organizers plan to serve up about three tons of the fatty strips.

They’re also prepared for a bit of oinking from outsiders.

A group of vegetarian doctors has been skewering Iowans over the event for months. Neal Barnard, president of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, says he wants to publicize the flip side of bacon.

He says the PCRM plans to hand out fliers with warnings about how bacon “rotting in your mouth” potentially has various health risks, including cancer and diabetes.

I am aware of zero scientific evidence that anyone has ever gotten diabetes from eating bacon. And this is great:

Growing up in Fargo, N.D. …Dr. Barnard chowed down on bacon.

Both his father and grandfather were cattle ranchers. His palate changed, though, when he went off to Washington, D.C., for medical school.

A pathologist told Dr. Barnard, then 22 years old, to unlock a morgue freezer, pull out a body and help him examine the patient, dead from a heart attack.

The patient’s arteries were “hard as a rock,” Dr. Barnard recalls. The pathologist replied: “There’s your bacon and eggs, Neal.”

Soon, the medical student began to leave his carnivorous ways behind.

Primitive thinking like this is how ignorance is propagated. “You are what you eat.” “Big chief make crops grow.”

And we’re supposed to rely on these people for nutritional advice? And then let them force-feed our kids awful meals?

Hey, if you have ethical problems with eating animals, then be a vegan, but don’t delude yourself that it’s healthy, or that even if is for you that it will be for others. Now I’m curious as to what his cholesterol, blood pressure, and blood glucose levels are.

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