Rebuilding livers like new. Cool.
Clueless In London
Giles Whittell had a misanalysis of the US space program at the Times of London yesterday (registration required):
President Obama is nothing if not rational. He came to office facing the collapse of the US economy and has since ordered a freeze on discretionary non-security spending. He has ring-fenced his education budget, committed the Treasury to paying $1 trillion (£690 billion) over ten years on health insurance subsidies, and still has two wars to fund. In the circumstances, Nasa’s quixotic lunge toward Mars with a “new generation” of distinctly old-fashioned rockets looked vulnerable at best. If Mr Obama has his way, it will be doomed.
I would dispute the assessment of the president’s rationality, but NASA (why can’t the Brits learn to capitalize acronyms?) wasn’t making a “lunge toward Mars,” quixotically or otherwise. It wasn’t even making a “lunge” toward the moon. It was more of a slow crawl, unlikely to ever get there. And it was a smart decision, regardless of the economic environment. No matter how wealthy we are as a nation, it would be foolish to spend tens of billions on so little capability as Constellation offered when we could have much more for much less, and much sooner.
The last graf doesn’t make much sense, either:
There are stronger strategic arguments for maintaining America’s lead beyond Earth’s orbit. If it steps back, China will become the world’s dominant space-faring nation and its goals there remain unclear. Mr Obama understands this. He also knows that the idea of journeying to the next frontier retains a powerful hold on the American psyche, which is why he claims that his plan to outsource research and development for new propulsion technologies will lead eventually to Mars. Yet the frail US economy leaves his hands tied. For at least ten years American astronauts will fly to space in Russian capsules, or not at all — because American consumers borrowed too much for their houses.
It’s not clear who would be the dominant space-faring nation if we were to truly “step back,” (in reality, by any sensible understanding of the phrase, there are no space-faring nations on this planet, and there never have been). China is certainly in no hurry to go anywhere, at their current pace, and the Russians remain far ahead of them. But as I noted in a comment over there, the notion that it will take ten years to put a capsule on a Delta or Atlas, or to get Dragon ready for crew, is a ludicrous one. And it was going to be at least seven years before Ares/Orion would be ready (for a cost of at least a billion dollars a launch, a point that the defenders repeatedly ignore).
Anyway, as a result of the shoddy reporting, Daffyd Ab Hugh (is that a pseudonym?) has an uninformed Anti-Obama rant over at Hot Air:
…it’s hardly a surprise that Barack H. Obama is in the process of killing the Constellation program proposed by (of course) President George W. Bush to return human beings, Americans, to the Moon, this time to stay; to explore lunar science and geology, investigate the origins of our solar system, and exploit the vast mineralogical, energy, and environmental resources found on our nearest neighboring planet.
No, it’s not a surprise to anyone who read the Augustine Report (and particularly to those who read between the lines) — the program was a disaster. But it wasn’t proposed by George Bush, and that’s not why it’s being cancelled. Bush proposed the Vision for Space Exploration, which survives in much better shape than it did under Constellation (with the exception of an explicit goal of moon first). Constellation was Mike Griffin’s deformed brain child.
And in quoting Congressman Bishop, he fails to note that he is the Congressman from ATK, whose oxen is most severely gored by the Constellation cancellation — the SRBs are built in his district.
I actually agree with the criticism of the president’s indifference to (and ignorance, perhaps even loathing of) American exceptionalism, but there are many better pieces of evidence for it than finally fixing a screwed- up space policy. I might email Ed Morrissey to see if I can get space for a rebuttal.
Computer Problems
OK, so I decided to upgrade my video card in my Fedora 11 box. But when I fire it up, it won’t load X, or even boot. I look up what to do, and the instructions seem to say to install the latest Ndivia video drivers. So I put the old card back in and do so. Still no joy. So I put the old card back in, and this time it won’t even boot with the old card.
OK, so I have to somehow undo what I’ve done. But I can’t boot the machine.
Here is the problem. The machine pays no attention to keyboard commands during boot (e.g., I cannot get into the BIOS with DEL.) Which means that I can’t tell it to boot at a lower level to bypass X. In other words, I cannot boot.
Well, OK. So I burn a DVD of Fedora 13, and figure I’ll just rescue and upgrade at the same time.
But the Fedora DVD doesn’t recognize my keyboard either, until after it gets into the upgrade process, so I can’t just do a rescue. So I go ahead and upgrade. It says all the packages are installed, and reboot. I reboot, and it still can’t boot, because apparently the upgrade didn’t fix the video problem. And because I don’t have keyboard at boot, or even DVD initialization, I still can’t boot into terminal mode to fix the problem. I tried loading Knoppix, but I can’t figure out how to use it to see the Fedora drive. When I try to mount the drive, it says it doesn’t recognize the lpm2vp filesystem type.
Does anyone have any suggestions?
[Tuesday morning update]
OK, I’m updating from the machine using Knoppix, and I’ve mounted the drive. Now I just have to see if I can figure out what to do to fix it. Ideally, I’d uninstall the drivers that I installed, but I don’t have yum available in this mode, so I’m going to see if blacklisting Nouveau will fix it.
[Update a couple minutes later]
Dang. Nouveau is already blacklisted (it must have happened automagically when I installed the Nvidia drivers). Now I don’t know what to do to fix the problem.
[Update early afternoon]
OK, so I can boot into runlevel 3. I can’t bring up eth0 (it says that the device is not managed by NetworkManager — Google provides no clue as to what the problem could be), so I have no network connectivity with the box. When I telinit 5, it tells me that it’s disabled the nvidia drivers because it’s missing the nividia.ko for the new Fedora 13 kernel. The default driver in xorg.conf is vesa. As it continues to try to get to runlevel 5, it flashes a few times, but then quits. And the last line it displays is “Starting NMB services” which is says failed. It then just sits there until I ctrl-C out of the attempt, at which point I’m back to runlevel 3.
Any ideas?
[Update a few minutes later]
Well, the good news is that the machine is bootable, so in the last resort I can just back up /home and do a clean install.
[Update a few minutes later]
Hoorah! I stopped NetworkManager, and brought up eth0, and I now have an ssh connection to the machine from my laptop, so I have a place to back up. Though I’m starting to think that I should just go out and buy a new drive for a clean install, and then copy files over to it, and use the old drive for a mirror.
[Update a few minutes later]
OK, I removed akmod-nvidia, but I still get the same behavior when trying to telinit 5, and it still hangs at “Starting NMB services.”
[Update a while later]
Success! Almost. I reinstalled the nvidia drivers, following the instructions for Fedora 13, including editing grub.conf to blacklist nouveau. Then I shut down, put in the new video card, and rebooted. This time, when I telinited 5, it finally came up. The only problem now is that the screen isn’t displaying fully (that is, there is an inch of so of black on each side and a half inch top and bottom on my 22: LG monitor). Also, the highest resolution available from screen preferences is 1280 x 1024 (and I’m actually using 1280 x 720 to better match my screen ratio). I’m looking at the monitor manual to see if there’s anything I can do to enlarge the display, but I may also have to hack the X config file to get higher res. I assume that I can now reset the default to boot into level 5.
What’s Wrong With This Picture?
Do you see the president in here?
Me, neither.
Oh, that’s right. We need to look inside a can of kick-ass.
If Abolishing the Department Of Education Is Extreme
…then call me an extremist, too.
And extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.
[Update a few minutes later]
Bring it on, Senator. In fact, that’s a job I wouldn’t mind having.
Interestingly, Brownback is one of the few Republicans to have expressed support for the president’s new space plan. Probably because he asked Pete Worden’s advice.
The Missing Piece
John Strickland has some suggestions for in-LEO transportation:
One of the features of the original space station and shuttle concept was a space tug. The concept was called the S.T.S: (Space Transportation System), which would have allowed access to other locations in LEO (in the same or similar orbital plane) from the station. Such a tug would be able to capture large payloads, either modules or large cargo containers, and deliver them safely back to the station. The tug was originally in the post-Apollo plans, but by the mid-1970’s, like many critical components of the current Station, such as the Large Centrifuge Facility, it got chopped by budget cuts and budget overruns of other parts of the shuttle program, leaving just the Shuttle. Thus this component was lost long before the 1984 Reagan Space Station proposal. We still only have two components of what was intended to be a three-component system.
There were a few half-hearted attempts over the years to restore it (e.g., the Orbital Maneuvering Vehicle, which Marshall screwed the pooch on with, among other things, stupid requirements), but this hasn’t really been a serious discussion at NASA in decades. Yet it’s a key piece of the architecture for both LEO and BEO ops (a BEO version could be similar to the LEO one, except with larger tank or propulsion kits). And it’s all enabled by gas stations, of course. And these are all issues that Constellation, with its “let’s do Apollo again” mindset, completely ignored.
The Faculty Lounge
…is running (and in the process, ruining) the country:
If you wonder how our present administration’s attitudes toward business, commerce, taxes, finance, race, national security and foreign policy now play out, just drop by a local faculty lounge for a few minutes and listen up — America in 2010 will suddenly make sense, and perhaps scare the hell out of you all at once. It all reminds me of the proverbial first-semester college student who returns home at Thanksgiving to his near-broke parents to inform them of all the “new” things he’s learned at university.
Maybe we can start to mitigate some of the damage this November.
Unwarranted Assumptions
This writer has some tips on finding the best seats on a plane, but there’s an apparent bias:
Middle seats tend to be filled starting from the front of the aircraft and moving toward the rear—which means that if your flight isn’t full, you’re likely to get an empty seat next to you if you request an aisle seat in the center section in the back.
…I love 767s because there’s only one middle seat per row. This means that your chances of getting one are less than on any other two-aisle aircraft: A 767 can be 86 percent full before anyone gets stuck in the middle. Two-aisle planes tend to give you bigger seats, more legroom, and larger overhead bins than one-aisle aircraft.
…Unless I’ve achieved my personal nirvana of an aisle seat in an exit row, I always ask the gate agent if a better seat is available. Preferred seats (e.g., aisle seats up front) often open up at the gate because the elite-level or full-fare passengers who were occupying them get upgraded at the last minute.
Emphasis mine. Note that there’s an apparent assumption on her part that a) middle seats bad and b) aisle seats nirvana, for everyone. But why would I ask for an aisle seat when I don’t like aisle seats? I prefer windows, a word that doesn’t appear in the article. I actually almost prefer a middle seat to an aisle, because there is one less person to have to let out during the flight, and I’m not constantly getting jostled by passengers or flight attendants walking up and down the aisle. The only reason, to me, to prefer aisle is for safety (get out a little faster, unless you’re in an exit row), or a desire to get up occasionally and walk around (either for leg stretching or nature calls). My preference is to just cocoon at the window, where I can look out, and not be bothered by anyone else’s needs.
Yes, obviously, if you like aisles, then a two-aisle airplane is preferable. But if you prefer windows, wide-bodies suck, because they provide the lowest window-seat/seat ratio in the sky. My favorite plane, actually, is any variation on the old DC-9 (nowadays B-717 or S-80), because with only five seats per row, forty percent of them are windows.
In Case You Needed Another Reason
…to not watch the World Cup (I didn’t — I already had plenty), beware the vuvuzela.
A Little Blind
The liberal Democrat Obama-supporting rabbi who’s been getting death threats for accidentally outing Helen Thomas as the nasty piece of work she’s always been has been mugged by reality:
KURTZ: Well, let me interrupt you. What do you mean when you say “hate media”? I mean, obviously, you find yourself in the middle of this firestorm. Do you feel that journalists, programs, commentators have been personally unfair to you? And can you explain how?
NESENOFF: You know, I find that people that don’t cover the story or people that cover the story are so upset that they don’t know what to do, so they have to attack me, maybe we’ll say he did something on purpose or he filmed it a certain way, or we’ll find out what he did in his past. I mean, they don’t know what to do with it, but why don’t they actually ask me and find out maybe I liked Helen Thomas and I was actually for the fact that she went ahead and spoke to President Bush and said watch it with the Iraq War, although now I understand – and we have to reevaluate – that maybe when she was protesting the Iraq War, I was saying that because I didn’t want our soldiers to be in harm’s way. It turns out she didn’t want the Iraqis to be in harm’s way. So we have to, kind of, I have to really reevaluate liberal and conservative and really find out where I stand because I think I’ve been a little blind.
I think he’s discovering that they’re not for peace — they’re just on the other side.