George Abbey and Neal Lane have a new white paper on space policy recommendations. I haven’t read it yet, but I expect it to be pretty bad, based on history.
[Update a few minutes later]
OK, I skimmed it. Other than the recommendation to cancel Ares 1, almost everything else is wrong. Certainly turning our backs on missions beyond LEO is, as is a focus on energy and the environment. There are other agencies responsible for this. I was amused by this:
It is distressing to observe the current state of the U.S. space program as the nation moves into a new progressive era with the inauguration of President Barack Obama in January 2009.
Emphasis mine. I don’t think that word means what they think it means.
[Mid-afternoon update]
Like one of the commenters over at NASA Watch, I too am shocked, shocked that John Muratore wants to revive X-38 and come back in a lifting body.
I just did a Microsoft security update on my Windows 2000 machine, and now it bluescreens (something I hadn’t seen on this machine in years) when it reboots. I booted into safe mode, and removed the update (I think I removed the right one — I’m assuming that the latest one would be highest number, but that might not be right). It still won’t boot. I’m posting this from my Fedora box.
Any ideas?
[Late afternoon update]
Great. Now it blue screens going into Safe Mode.
I’ll have to find my setup disk, but I doubt if I’ll have time before I go to CA on Monday.
Wayne Hale is shocked, shocked to discover gambling in this establishment.
Sorry, but that’s how bureaucracies work, Wayne. It goes with being a federal agency, unfortunately, particularly when what the agency is doing is perceived to be politically unimportant.
I’m back in Boca, having a busy afternoon, but Iowahawk has been busy too. He has some multicultural wisdom, and tax advice from the new Treasury secretary. Also, questioning whether the new president took the short bus to the White House.
It seems like it’s getting to be time for this. The problem is that people who pay taxes are too busy working to earn the money on which to pay taxes to have time to go to Washington. Massive marches on Washington are reserved for those with no jobs, or nothing to do, or because they are on the dole of some kind, sometimes aided by federal subsidization of “community organizers” like ACORN.
That’s one of the reasons that big-government programs are a positive-feedback ratchet that are almost impossible to reverse. The programs have their own built-in constituencies, that are funded by the programs to allow them to agitate for more, while the ever-shrinking rest of us who are trying to actually earn a living get stuck with the bill. It can’t go on forever, of course, but it can go on long enough to ruin a nation.
I don’t want Barack Obama to succeed, and it’s not my job to make him succeed, or pledge to be his servant.
I want America to succeed. I only want him to succeed to the degree that he shares that goal. Based on his actions so far, in supporting this travesty being shoved through Congress, it doesn’t appear that he does.
Challenger was destroyed live on television, in front of millions of schoolchildren watching the first teacher go into space. We learned many lessons from that event. Most of them are wrong.
As I noted yesterday, on the Apollo 1 anniversary, I had a piece about the tragic space anniversaries that cluster around the end of January a year ago.