…that may doom Obama’s presidency. Happy talk about how many jobs Obama has created isn’t going to cut it in the face of numbers like this. It’s the most anemic recovery in decades, and it’s not going to get any better with the policies in place.
The Apollo Fire
It’s been forty-five years since Ed White, Roger Chaffee and gus Grissom were horribly incinerated on the launch pad, in a ground test. Clara Moskowitz has the story of the changes to the program that ensued as a result. And tomorrow will be the twenty-sixth anniversary of the loss of the Challenger. Where has the time gone?
[Update late morning]
More from Amy Teitel. Note that for both these young women, this is history — it happened before they were born.
Romney’s Debate On Space
Top. Men.
[Update a few minutes later]
OK, it’s clear that Mitt is completely out to sea on the issue (if it wasn’t already).
He just lost the votes of anyone interested in space, completely needlessly, because he saw it as an opportunity to bash Newt. As I said, a soulless technocrat.
[Friday morning update]
Who has the best plan for space? Take the poll.
[Update a few minutes later]
For anyone interested, here’s the transcript.
Newt.In.Space!
Katherine Mangu-Ward has found the Newt-ET connection.
More Media Dietary Ignorance
So, here we have a young woman in the UK who has has eaten nothing but Chicken McNuggets™ her whole life, and is in poor health, but a mystery remains:
…despite a diet that regularly means she eats at least a third more than the 56g of fat recommended by experts, she manages to keep relatively trim.
This may be down to the amount of exercise she does or to her metabolism.
Or maybe, just maybe, eating fat is not what makes you fat.
It is an awful diet, to be sure, but not because of what’s in it (fat) but because of what is not (healthy vegetables). It has a reasonable balance of protein and carbs (though it would be better if the carbs weren’t a batter, and could be a little lower). It’s the lack of nutrients that is killing her, not the fat.
Michael Mann’s UVA Emails
A first look. Well, now we now why they fought so hard to avoid release.
NASA’s “Day Of Remembrance”
OK, so the anniversary (forty-fifth) of the Apollo I fire is tomorrow, the twenty-sixth Challenger anniversary is Saturday, and Wednesday is the ninth anniversary of the Columbia loss. So why commemorate today?
Meanwhile, On Tatooine
A Space Business Interview With Jeff Greason
With a bonus appearance by Chuck Lauer.
NASA’s Irrational Approach To Risk
Bob Zubrin asks how much an astronaut is worth. I don’t think that this is historically accurate, though:
The attempted Hubble desertion demonstrates how a refusal to accept human risk has led to irresponsible conduct on the part of NASA’s leadership. The affair was such a wild dereliction of duty, in fact, that O’Keefe was eventually forced out and the shuttle mission completed by his replacement.
That’s not how I remember it. I recall at the time that I thought, and even advocated, that O’Keefe step down, because he had demonstrated himself unable to do the job, being traumatized by having to tell the Columbia families and friends on the tarmac at KSC that their loved ones weren’t coming home, which is probably what caused his timidity about Hubble. But I’m aware of no evidence that he was “forced out” over the decision. I thought that he simply wanted out of the job and took the best offer that came along. The administration would have been loath to remove an administrator, knowing how hard it is to find a good one. Someone should write a letter to the Reason editor on this. Bob either needs to substantiate this with a credible citation, or the magazine should run a correction. Because I think it’s wishful thinking on his part.
[Update a few minutes later]
Bad link, it’s fixed now, sorry.
[Mid-afternoon update]
While I criticized O’Keefe at the time, I didn’t actually disagree with the Hubble decision at the time. The problem that I saw with it was that it was based on irrational criteria. All the focus was on astronaut safety, and no one seemed to be considering how disastrous it would be if we lost another orbiter. NASA had no shortage of astronauts, but there were only three birds left in the fleet, and we would have had to complete ISS with only two, if the program survived at all. Add to that the fact that we probably could have launched an improved Hubble replacement for the cost of the repair mission, and the decision to do it was irrational in its own way, driven by an emotional attachment to the telescope that had shown so many wonders over the past decade.