I’m a little skeptical that this would actually work. But the researchers have the luxury that there is no chance that they would ever be able to test it.
[Update early afternoon]
Got Medieval makes short work of this.
We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Air Breathers
Henry Spencer (who I expect will be at Space Access this year, after missing last year for the first time ever) explains (once again) why the future of space launch continues to lie with rockets, despite the superficial appeal of not having to carry oxidizer.
This is an important point that I’d never thought about explicitly:
The pure-rocket design was more than twice as heavy as X-30 at takeoff, because of all that LOX. On the other hand, its empty weight – the part you have to build and maintain – was 40% less than X-30’s. It was about half the size. Its fuel and oxidiser together cost less than half as much per flight as X-30’s fuel. And finally, because it quickly climbed out of the atmosphere and did its accelerating in vacuum, it had to endure rather lower stresses and less than 1% of X-30’s friction heating. Which approach would be easier and cheaper to operate was pretty obvious.
This implies that a rocket powered vehicle will have much better off-design (higher delta V, such as more altitude or higher inclination) performance than the air breather, because its dry mass that has to be given the additional velocity is much less. It also means that it will be cheaper to deorbit, and the thermal load will be less, for a given wing area (assuming that it has wings, which an air breather certainly would). I suspect that no matter what the technology level, air-breathing launchers are doomed to remain the equivalent of flying cars — interesting in theory, but never achieved in practice.
Please, Just Kill Me Now
I don’t want to live in a world with Trek fragrances.
I Hope He Freezes In The Dark
Timothy Noah is cheering what he hopes is the upcoming demise of the nuclear power industry, in the wake of Obama’s closing off the Yucca Mountain option. I was never a big fan of Yucca Mountain — I think it a ridiculously overpriced solution to an hysterical non-problem. But for the money that they planned to spend on it, we could have come up with a safe and reliable launch industry, by using it as a market for storage on the moon.
Health-Status Insurance
A free-market solution to health care. Of course, it doesn’t pass the litmus test of socializing medicine, so it will be a non-starter with this administration.
Statists, Meet Petard
Northern Virginia and the other DC suburbs are going to be hit hard by the Obama tax plan. I’m guessing that these are areas that went overwhelmingly for The One, to give him his overall Virginia victory. Here’s a good example of Mencken’s dictum that democracy would give the people what they want, and ensure that they get it good and hard. And this points out the economic mindlessness and absurdity of picking an arbitrary income level to start punishing achievement:
Besides raising tax rates in 2011 on the highest income brackets, this year’s budget would lower the deductions families earning $250,000 can make from their income.
“In my district, we have a high household income, but I would say two things about that,” Himes said. “No. 1, there’s huge diversity in my district. It includes some of the poorest families in the country and some of the wealthiest.
“And second, income has to be held against expenses. We have one of the highest costs of living in the country as well, which is problematic for all sorts of things,” Himes said.
The median sales price for a home in Greenwich, according to the real estate website Trulia, is $735,000, but that’s down significantly. Bloomberg reported in February that home sales in Greenwich, where the nation’s hedge fund industry generally lives, plunged 84 percent in January 2009 compared to a year earlier.
It’s still cheaper to buy a home in Fargo, where the average listing price is $192,436, according to Trulia. It’s also safe to say that wages are a little lower in the Red River Valley.
There is a reason that federalism is a good idea. Like a national “minimum wage,” to the degree that such a thing should exist at all, it’s ridiculous to apply a one-size fits all to the entire country. Both tax rates and wage and price controls should be left to the states, not Washington. But hey, they wanted “change.” Don’t come crying to me.
Is Rush Limbaugh…
There are many things that bug me about Barack Obama — the insane laundry list speeches, the silly rhetoric, the hostility to the free market — but these are all talked about. He has another habit that hasn’t been talked about so much and, of all the things he does, it makes me the most queasy.
It’s pretty subtle, but I think it’s worth keeping an eye on because, if it were to become full-blown, it has the potential to be the most socially damaging element of his presidency.
I’m talking about what I’m going to call his Goldstein-ism, his tendency to make veiled, dark allusions to a recently vanquished “other”, an evil being (he is never specific) who is, he always implies, the real cause of all our problems.
George Orwell wouldn’t have been one of the rubes.
[Mid-morning update]
Obama’s sledging tactics of intimidation.
Why does this administration keep reminding me of my trip to the museum?
[Update late afternoon]
Rush makes the president an offer he can’t accept.
They want to have it both ways. If the White House really wants to portray Rush as the leader of the Republicans, then why not have the leader of the Democrats debate him? Harry Reid already found out what happens when you pull on Rush’s tail.
The Case For Bankruptcy
Mickey Kaus says that it’s time for GM to bow to the inevitable. I agree — bankruptcy wouldn’t make things any worse, and could improve many things (including not having to bail it out with taxpayers’ funds any more). As a member of a GM family, I don’t say that with any cheer, but at some point, reality must be accepted.
[Update in the afternoon]
Here’s one more reason for GM to throw in the towel. The “Cap and Trade” in the budget bill will kill the industry, and Michigan.
A Question For Obama ApologizerSupporters
Is there anything that he’s done for which you would criticize him?
[Wednesday morning update]
Victor Davis Hanson has some advice for the Messiah, that he won’t take.
You see, as in the case of any other politician, one must look to what he does—and has done—not what he says for election advantage.
And in the case of Sen. Obama, in his nascent career in the Senate, he had already compiled the most partisan record of any Democratic Senator. He had attended religiously one of the most racially divisive and extremist churches in the country. His Chicago friends were not moderates. His campaigns for state legislature, the House and the Senate were hard-ball, no-prisoner affairs of personal destruction, even by Chicago standards. Campaign references to reparations, gun- and bible-clingers, and Rev. Wright’s wisdom were not words of healing.
But the rubes bought it, anyway.
Making War On Prosperity
A lot of discussion of the impact of the president’s plan to punish anyone making over a quarter of a million bucks. What is particularly disgusting is all of his lies and rhetoric about the free market providing jobs, and the importance of small business and entrepreneurs. Watch what he does, not what he says.
[Update in the evening]
Carl Pham in comments suggests a variation on Martin Niemuller’s famous quote: “First they came for those making $250,000, and I said nothing, because I didn’t make that much…”
[Update a little while later]
If you work less to avoid taxes, are you a tax dodger?
I think it’s worse (or will be worse) than that. You’re an enemy of the state.
[Update a few minutes later]
It’s certainly a theory that fits the facts.
[Update at 7 PM Eastern]
Going John Galt.