Picking the head of MADD for the NHTSA?
The position of NHTSA chief requires an administrator of sound judgment, not a zealot beholden to special interests. Mr. Hurley’s associations and background raise the specter that he could use NHTSA regulations and safety grants to benefit his friends and coerce states into adopting his overbearing pet policies.
And the idiot wants to bring back the double nickel, too.
Jeff Foust has a good roundup of the critical issues that are becoming more urgent (what to do about Shuttle and Constellation) and the current rumors.
[Update a few minutes later]
Here’s a lot more from Chris Bergin. This seems like great news, if true:
General Peter Worden, Director of NASA’s Ames Research Center (ARC), will also spearhead a NASA review, which is deemed to have “wide scope” – likely to include shuttle extension – while a main body “Blue Ribbon Panel” will work with the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) in Washington, possibly overseeing all of the studies.
Jim Muncy was hinting at this a couple weeks ago at Space Access. What I don’t understand is what’s been taking them so long to get this under way. It could have happened back in February, and they’d be done by now.
I’ve been pretty disappointed with it for decades, but it seems much worse than I thought. Apparently, a new organization is needed to protect civil liberties (including the Second Amendment, though the NRA has been doing the heavy lifting there, anyway).
Little Miss Attila thinks so (sorta):
Janeane Garofalo is absolutely right: the tea parties are racism straight up. Because if it had been racism on the rocks, PJM would have gotten someone else to do interviews that day, instead of asking Zo to do two jobs. And if it had been racism-and-water, the organizers of the event wouldn’t have imposed upon Alfonzo by asking him to the podium. If it were racism-and-soda, they wouldn’t have recruited Zo to work for PJTV at all, but would have allowed him to continue commenting on events from his living room in the SoCal desert.
But don’t you see, this just proves Janeane’s point, because as all the bien pensant know, Zo (who I had the pleasure to briefly meet at Bill Whittle’s birthday party a couple weeks ago) is obviously a Tom.
Glad I’m not bien pensant.
Scaled has issued a press release in response to Rob Coppinger’s speculations about Monday’s rudder-dragging incident that raises new questions. What do they mean when they say:
…you should question the motivations of a publication that reports design or flight test information that is based only on speculation.
Why should we question them? What will it gain us to do so? What “motives” are they implying here?
Also, my understanding is that Rob posted this at his blog, which presumably has less rigorous standards than a Flight Global article, and is exactly the place to do the same kind of speculating that we all were (though I didn’t blog about it).
This seems like an unjustified slam at Rob, with no basis, other than that they’re upset about his speculations. I doubt if it will change his reporting or attitude toward Scaled in the future, but this doesn’t seem like very good press relations to me, and I just don’t understand their purpose in doing this. As Clark says, it would have been a lot better had they left off that last sentence. Also, as Jeff says, that’s why they call them “test flights.”
Randy Barnett proposes a federalism amendment to the Constitution. We shouldn’t need one, but the courts have so misinterpreted the Commerce Clause that apparently we need to be very explicit. And repealing the sixteenth amendment would be a great idea as well.
Rob Coppinger says that the Aerospace study on EELVs/Ares comparison hasn’t been completed. If so, we still don’t know what the actual cost comparisons are.
From Jon Goff. Sometimes it’s necessary to point out the obvious — for a one-way delivery, reusability can be a bug, but for round trips, it’s a feature.
The supply chain is simply empty, all the way up to the people who mine the raw materials. It’s going to take time to replace all the links in that chain, and it’s not because of the war in Iraq/Afghanistan, The Joos, FEMA, the CIA, a secret agreement to implement gun control through ammo availability, or any other silly theory you may have heard. This is a textbook example of what happens when an inelastic supply chain, composed with scarce “just in time” inventories, meets insatiable demand. It’s not sexy or intriguing, but that’s the way it is.
You know what’s scarier? Your food comes to you the same way. Imagine what would happen if…
And we were thinking about going shooting this weekend.
[Via Mark Danziger]
[Update mid morning]
Here’s a fact sheet on the ammo shortage.