Humor, Political Commentary, Technology and Society

More America 3.0 Analogies

November 29, 2011 Rand Simberg 5 Comments

From Jim Bennett’s Facebook page:

Iain Stuart Murray: Hopefully America 3.0 won’t have to be patched continually like version 2. And it should outperform Europe 5.7.1.2 and probably UKX.

James C. Bennett: Well, America 1.0 was based on a cleaned-up version of England 5.0, the highly successful 1688 release. 3.0 throws out the patches created for 2.0 that had gotten cumbersome and tries to play on the strengths of the original design. Since the original code was English, some of the design could well prove useful for a new UK release.

Iain Stuart Murray: let’s see – England 5.0 was replaced by UKI in 1707, thanks to a merger with another operating system. This proved so successful that it kept adding new features, although it lost some really attractive ones in 1776 when America 1.0 was spun off. UKII in 1801 might be thought of as the first in a series of bloatware expansions. UKIII was in 1858, and UKIV in 1877 following the complete acquisition of Indian call centers that had been outsourced. There were a series of updates between 1906 and 1914, and then several features were spun off until the completely radical revision of UKVII in 1948. That looked shiny when first released, but soon became the slowest system on the market, leading to the equally radical UKVIII in 1979. UKIX (1997) was based on UKVIII but required more and more admin permissions as time went on. There is hope that UKX (2010) will make it cleaner, but there’s been little evidence of that so far.

James C. Bennett: Unfortunately, the development partnership for UK X, formed at the last minute by adverse market circumstances, has resulted in the partner’s insistence on incorporating large chunks of code from Bonaparte V, which runs on an entirely different operating system. Since Bonaparte V itself is already displaying severe problems, this was a particularly problematic choice.

Heh.

History, Political Commentary, Technology and Society

The Long View

November 29, 2011 Rand Simberg 3 Comments

Putting current events into perspective:

Long after the time in which anyone can easily recall who was US president in 2011, or what party was in power, or which wars of declining empire were fought, and then long after anyone even cares about that ancient history, and later, long after the whole downward slope of the history of the US is but a footnote of interest to scholars of the transition from second to third millennium, and later still, long after anyone can even find out with any great reliability who was US president in 2011 … long after all these things are forgotten, the first half of the 21st century will still be clearly recalled as the dawn of the era in which aging was conquered.

It will also be remembered as the era in which we finally opened up the rest of the solar system to human endeavors after the false start of the mid-twentieth century.

Political Commentary, War Commentary

Pakistan

November 29, 2011 Rand Simberg 2 Comments

Time to stop harboring illusions.

Uncategorized

America 3.0

November 28, 2011 Rand Simberg 12 Comments

Looks like an interesting new book will be out in a while.

Political Commentary, Space

The Unaffordable SLS

November 28, 2011 Rand Simberg 49 Comments

John Strickland makes the case against it over at The Space Review today. I don’t think this is right, though:

It is hard to imagine being able to quickly set up such a [lunar] base without a launch campaign of at least five HLV launches per year. To do this you will also need one or more cryogenic propellant depots in Earth orbit to assure that the propellant to support such a launch rate from LEO to the Moon or Mars is guaranteed to be available in LEO before the buildup begins. (Without the depots, the total cargo delivered to a base site for a given number of SLS launches would be cut about in half). The depots would also need to be launched by HLV boosters. Assuming a minimum of five SLS launches per year at $5 billion a launch, the total cost is $25 billion a year, far beyond NASA’s overall annual budget, let alone its human spaceflight budget. With a launch every two years, it would take a decade to provide the most minimal equipment for a surface base, and most of that would have been sitting there for many years and would thus likely be thermally damaged and unusable.

I really need to see the work here. On what is he basing the need for five launches per year? And how does the depot double the lunar payload? And why does the depot or depots require a heavy lifter? Is he assuming they will be launched full? The depot structure itself doesn’t weigh all that much and could easily go up on an Atlas or even a Falcon 9. And doesn’t that five billion per launch for the SLS assume a low flight rate? Presumably, if they really could do five a year, the per-flight cost would be much less. I’m not saying his numbers are wrong, but I’d need a lot more explanation to accept them. I do agree with this:

In addition to the political impasse over booster development, the nature of the current NASA planning system results in a vicious circle, seemingly created by deliberately not including advanced technology components into future mission plans. The reasoning behind these decisions are that the components do not yet exist, but the result is that the badly needed components are never developed, since there is never a specific mission designated where they will be used. Then when the mission is flown, its capabilities are greatly reduced due to the lack of the component. For example, NASA is currently budgeting money to develop cryogenic propellant depots in orbit, yet the depots are not included in or integrated into any plans for the BEO missions using the SLS. (This issue was the focus of a letter on September 27 to Administrator Bolden by Rep. Dana Rohrabacher.) Such delays and/or sapping of funds from technology programs for use by the SLS development by Congress allows mission planners to continue to exclude advanced technology solutions from future BEO mission plans.

This is the perennial institutional problem of technology development at the agency because, unlike its predecessor the NACA, technology development doesn’t seem to be viewed as NASA’s job, at least not enough to actually fund it. It’s always chicken and egg in that no one wants to put a new technology on the critical path for a mission, and because no mission requires it, the technology never gets the priority it needs for development. The solution to this is to refocus the agency on tech development, but that doesn’t provide enough pork in the right places.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

It Is Not Unconstitutional

November 28, 2011 Rand Simberg 12 Comments

…to amend the Constitution:

This article embodies two maladies of the mainstream media that Ramesh Ponnuru pointed out on another occasion also afflicts the Left: (1) they don’t really understand conservative arguments; and (2) they don’t really understand the Constitution.

It’s nothing new. Actually, I’d go further and say they don’t understand arguments, period. They’ve grown up in a propagandistic cocoon in which they’ve never had to actually make arguments, or rationally defend or question their own beliefs, because it is simply given by all around them that they are correct.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society

An Open Letter To Dr. Phil Jones

November 28, 2011 Rand Simberg 3 Comments

We are dealing with liars:

Your explanation of your statement is this:

At the end of the IPCC process, chapters, formal comments and responses are all published and that is the appropriate place for this information. It is important that scientists should be allowed free and frank discussion during the writing process. I might also point out that I decided not to take part in AR5 because of the time commitment it requires.

That sounds perfectly logical … if we were dealing with honest men. But if the Climategate emails have shown anything, they have shown that we are not dealing with honest men. Far too many of the leading AGW supporting climate scientists have been shown by their own words to be serial liars like yourself.

But in any case, only scientists with something to hide need privacy to have a “free and frank discussion” about science. Honest scientists have no reason to hide their views. Honest scientists discuss these scientific issues on the web in the full light of day. Why on earth would someone need privacy to discuss the intricacies of the climate models? Do you really have to go into a closet with your best friend to speak your true mind about atmospheric physics? Is it true that you guys actually need some kind of ‘private space’ to expose your secret inner ideas about the factors affecting the formation of clouds? From my perspective, these kinds of private discussions are not only not what is needed. This two-faced nature of you guys’ statements on the science are a large part of the problem itself.

This is quite visible in the Climategate emails. In your communications, you and many of the scientists are putting out your true views of other scientists and their work. You are expressing all kinds of honest doubts. You are discussing uncertainties in your and other scientists understandings. You are all letting your friends know which papers you think are good and which you think are junk, and that’s valuable information in the climate science discussions.

But you never say any of this in public. Not one word. For example, in public it’s all about how great Michael Mann’s science is, not a word of criticism, while in private some of you guys justifiably tear both him and his work to shreds.

I find this double-speak deceptive and underhanded. It has nothing to do with “free and frank discussion” as you claim. I think that if AGW supporting scientists actually broke down and told the truth to the public, you would fare much better. I think that if you disavowed your beloved Saint Stephen (Schneider) and his advice, and you expressed all of your doubts and revealed all of your uncertainties about the climate and told the plain unvarnished truth about your opinion of other scientists’ work, we’d be infinitely better off. Nobody likes two-faced people. You would be miles ahead if you said the same things in public you say in private, and so would the field of climate science.

But it wouldn’t serve “the cause.” When will people realize that the climate “scientists” have not been engaging in science? And they’re not just liars. I don’t know what the FOIA laws are in England, but I think that if Jones had done here what he did in East Anglia, he could be subject to criminal prosecution. And would be, at least under an administration that was more interested in enforcing the law than in maintaining politically correct pieties. I hope we’ll get an administration like that some day.

Transterrestrial Musings