Some thoughts from sometime space lawyer Glenn Reynolds.
Message For The Cultists
Obama isn’t Jesus. Jesus could actually build a cabinet.
Heh.
Another Neocon Weighs In On Freeman
You know, that famous neocon Lanny Davis:
Mr. Freeman’s departing rant explaining his withdrawal, in which did not take any responsibility and obscured the facts about his own actual writings, and made dark and false charges of a conspiracy of nameless people who “libeled” him — again without a single factual example — was ironically the best evidence of all as to why, temperamentally and intellectually, he was not qualified for this particular job of objectively assessing crucial national intelligence facts.
Surely I’m not the only person to be disturbed that this man was nominated in the first place.
Ignorance, Or Lies?
The Brady bunch is at it again. Of course, either way, you’d think that the press would stop paying attention to them. If, that is, they weren’t sympathetic to gun grabbing themselves.
A Strange Conference
Over at Arocket, Randall Clague (of XCOR) notes how weird you have to be to stand out at Space Access:
A colleague went to pick up Ed Wright’s hat off the table, Ed intoned, “Objects at rest shall remain at rest.” XCOR got its first investment check after firing a rocket engine inside a crowded ballroom – at Space Access – with the written permission of the Scottsdale Fire Marshal. “Laser physicist and arm-waver extraordinaire” Jordin Kare has been known to sing of a sadistic designer and the machinists he tortures with his impossible designs. (One design was a hollow sphere, to be machined. One person wondered, “Would you need a six-dimensional lathe for that, or could you do it it in four?” Someone else answered, “You could do it in four. You only need one additional degree of freedom.”) ERPS used to give demonstrations of hydrogen peroxide decomposition – during their Space Access presentation – until they got an ashtray too hot and scorched the tablecloth.
It’s the best conference in the industry.
It’s coming up in only three weeks.
They’re Not Anti-Intimidation
They’re just on the other side.
Artificial Life
…within a decade? It wouldn’t shock me.
What Made The Difference?
I was struck by this sentence in Jen Rubin’s piece today on the end of the Obama honeymoon:
The swiftness of the criticism seems remarkable given the reverence which the media displayed toward Obama and the presidential transition which most commentators regarded as unusually smooth.
So what happened? Why was the transition so “smooth” and the actual governing been so rocky and seemingly incompetent?
Well, here’s something that all the transition swooners in the media and other places didn’t consider. What changed on January 20th? Who was in charge before that date? Blinded by the glow of their adoration, did they perhaps misattribute the source of the “smoothness”?
And what does that portend for the next almost-four years?
Making Space Relevant To The American People
In a discussion at NASA Watch about the president’s…interesting…statements on space policy, Andrew Tubbiolo has some ideas:
Launch Vehicle Extreme Makeover:
A team of crack yet touchy feely Engineers arrive on a bus, send the NASA team to Disney World, tear everything apart, and employ John Carmak and XCOR Aerospace to rebuild everything…..It’ll all look nice, but doesn’t really need to work. Employ the typical attendees of the Space Access Conference as the mindless mob cheering the action on.Big Brother, Space Station Edition:
Pick the hottest babes from an international set of scientists, one grumpy Russian, a cut party animal fighter jock from the US Navy and lock them in an orbital space station for one month of intense competition. Make them execute complex, obscure, yet useless tasks that employ almost none of the skills they developed thus far in their lives. Every week someone is voted out the airlock.The Gong Panel:
A panel of three PI’s from past obscure space missions completed at least a decade ago decide the fate of proposed programs as they are presented live on stage. The proposed project with the highest score wins funding. At any time during the presentation panel members are allowed to reject the proposal by banging a gong.I think this would go a long way towards making space more relevant to the general public. Heck, it would make me pay more attention to it.
Don’t give PAO any ideas.
[Late morning update]
Here is the full story on the president’s remarks.
He said nothing about whether he wants to continue the Bush administration’s Constellation program, intended to send astronauts to the moon by 2020. The program’s Ares I rocket is behind schedule and over budget, leading to speculation that it will miss its targeted 2015 launch date and further reduce the skilled work force at KSC.
He was also silent about the fate of the $100billion international space station. Once the shuttle is retired, NASA will depend on Russian Soyuz spacecraft for access to the station.
I’ve been trying, ever since the inauguration, to figure out if the plan is to come up with a new direction for the agency, and then find an administrator to implement it, or to find a good administrator, and direct him (or her) to come up with the plan. Or, given a lot of the other Charlie Foxtrot that’s been going on in general, if there is no plan.
Cubesat Futures
Joe Katzman explains.