Humor, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Satire

Epic Fail

That’s what Iowahawk says that his five-year plan was:

I started this blog with a simple goal in mind: to attract gullible millions into a worldwide online cult and then bilk them of their life savings. Five years, 450-odd posts and almost that many pageviews later, my actual market appeal has proven somewhat more selective. Extremely more selective. Still, it’s much more than I deserve, and I’d like offer my very sincere thanks for your patronage. I sure hope you had 1% of the fun reading the junk I post here as had typing it, even if (especially if?) you don’t see eye-to-eye with me politically. If any of it annoyed you I hope that deep down, were also a tiny bit amused.

I (and I suspect many others) disagree (and I say this as someone who was beating on him to get a blog via email for many months prior to its inception). His top-twenty-five hits are spectacular, and somehow, I had missed the liberal elevator pitches, which are hilarious (as are some of the reader contributions in comments).

Here’s to at least another five years of the unexcellable Hawk.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

What They Need

3 Comments

…but won’t get. Iain Murray describes what will be necessary for a successful auto industry:

…the best way to save the auto industry remains a deregulatory bailout, reducing government-imposed burdens on the industry, and in particular Congress backing off on its destructive CAFE requirements.

One of those government-imposed burdens is the Wagner Act and the NLRB that enables the UAW to maintain a stranglehold on the industry. Unfortunately, all of the above, while the most needed, are also the most unlikely things to be had from the new regime. If anything, as I’ll note in a Pajamas column tomorrow, they’re only going to make things worse.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

From “Dictator” To “Czar”

4 Comments

Jonah Goldberg with some brief thoughts on the unconscious fascism of the denizens of the Beltway.

[Update in the afternoon]

Mickey has a good point:

We need a Czar Czar, to crack the whip on all the czars. … P.S.: Also a federal czar policy. Right now, czar decisions are made on an ad hoc, case-by-case basis, with no attempt at czar harmonization.

It seems like a logical next step.

Political Commentary, Space, Space and Campaign 2008

Hope, And Change (Part Whatever)

4 Comments

A lot of space enthusiasts have been enthused about Obama’s pick for Commerce Secretary, based on his support for commercial space. Unfortunately, his staff is under investigation for a pay-to-play scandal. I’d like to say I’m shocked, but there’s an old saying (and I’ve had some experience with it in looking for spaceport consulting work) that New Mexico is “Louisiana with jalapenosgreen chiles.” And this doesn’t help much with the transition, on top of the Blogojevich thing.

Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space

Broken-Window Fallacy Redux

7 Comments

In a discussion of Peter Diamandis’ recommendations to NASA (most of which I broadly agree with), Ferris Valyn makes the classical error in discussing government spending:

As for your other point:

You’re contradicting your statement that there is no guaranteed ROI. Money spent on NASA is money NOT spent on everything/anything else. You are assuming your conclusion is true and using that in your argument to prove your conclusion [otherwise known as “begging the question” — rs]. That’s not allowed.

Money spent, whether wisely or not, always grows the economy. Whether its the 60 cents I spent to buy gum, or government buying a new power plants, that money always grows the economy. The fundemental question is, whether it grows the economy in a way that we want to grow it. And while I will agree that we haven’t proven that space development grows the economy 100% in the way we want, I would argue that space development has a large preponderance of evidence supporting it.

No, it is quite possible to spend money and shrink the economy (and few entities are better at doing this than governments — see, for example, Soviet Socialist Republics, Union of). For instance (to use the classical example), we could institute a government program to pay half of the populace to dig holes, and the other half to fill them. How fast does Ferris think that the economy will “grow” under such a program?

This is also one of the classic lousy arguments that space advocates use to advocate. I discussed it in a column a few years ago. Space spending has to be justified on its merits, in terms of the return we get for it in terms of actual space activity. It can’t be justified simply as “spending” that “always grows the economy,” because there are potentially many other means of “spending” (such as simply letting the taxpayers keep their own money) that are much more effective at doing so.

Political Commentary, Space, Space and Campaign 2008

Mike Still Needs An Irony Meter

2 Comments

Joel Achenbach has a piece at the WaPo today on the ongoing NASA/transition foofaraw:

Griffin’s pugnaciousness may not have been the most politically savvy way to lobby to keep his job, but no one could say it was out of character.

No kidding. I found this tragic:

With multiple degrees, including a doctorate in aerospace engineering, Griffin is not reluctant to reveal the confidence he has in his judgments. And he may be lobbying for the ambitious Constellation program as much as for himself. He has always been a true believer in what he calls “the majesty of spaceflight,” and he fervently hopes to see human civilization expand across the solar system.

I believe that he hopes that, which is why it’s such a shame that he’s done more to set us back from that goal in the past three years than anyone else.

And this is an attitude I’ve never understood:

Ed Weiler, a NASA associate administrator (occasionally mentioned in the space community as a potential successor to Griffin), would like to see his boss stick around for a while, particularly with the tricky space shuttle mission to repair the Hubble Space Telescope coming up next spring.

“I’d certainly like to have a leader who was an experienced engineer or whatever,” Weiler said.

Why? Why should the NASA administrator be an experienced engineer? Doesn’t NASA have people at lower levels who are competent to oversee a Shuttle flight, even one for the Hubble repair? Is it the job of the administrator to micromanage at that level?

I never had a problem with Sean O’Keefe not being an engineer — I don’t expect a good NASA administrator to be an engineer. O’Keefe’s problem was not a lack of technical expertise, but the fact that he got gun shy after Columbia, and was no longer able to be decisive or lead, because he feared too much having to tell another set of families on the tarmack that their loved ones were gone.

In general, I don’t think it hurts to have some technical knowledge, though in the case of Griffin, I think it did, because he doesn’t/didn’t understand what the job of the administrator is, which is not to get involved in engineering and drive the results of trade studies in favor of one’s own pet designs. Arguably the best NASA administrator (and there aren’t many good ones — most of them have been bad) was Jim Webb, at least in terms of carrying out administration policy and accomplishing the goal. He was a lawyer.

Media Criticism, Space

The Latest Fantasy From The Usual Suspect

4 Comments

Mark Whittington now “thinks” (to use the word generously, since it is without evidence) that Doug Cooke has made his imaginary friends in his imaginary “Internet Rocketeers Club” “very angry.” I wonder if he “thinks” they’re so angry that they’re going to go after him with their Illudium Pew-36 Explosive Space Modulators.

Of course, to be fair, it’s hard to provide evidence about the emotions of imaginary friends.

It certainly doesn’t make me very angry. In fact, it doesn’t make me angry at all. Like all of Mark’s posts about his imaginary friends, who don’t seem to have names, I find it amusing. Of course, I don’t really care much what Doug Cooke says. But anonymous.space has a response to it in comments at Space Politics:

“‘I attended the review myself, and despite what was said in the blogosphere and the sensational media, it was very professionally done,’ he said.”

Cooke’s memory of the Ares I PDR is at complete odds with the written record.

Many reviewer comments highlighted the PDR’s lack of technical substance and preference for requirements processing over actual design analysis. It was arguably a System Requirements Review (SRR, which should have been completed much earlier in the program), not a Preliminary Design Review (PDR). Among the comments making these points:

[snip many comments worth following the link to read]

Finally, Cooke’s comment here from the STA luncheon:

“So we asked a lot of hard questions, and I have to say that the team was especially well-prepared.”

Just makes no sense. If the team had been well-prepared, then they wouldn’t have earned so many yellow and yellow/red grades in the review. Out of ten grades, Ares I earned four yellow grades and three yellow/red grades. As NASA’s next human space flight system, Ares I should be a model of technical excellence. Instead, the program hasn’t done its homework (or is finding its homework too difficult, given the constraints on the design) and is earning average or below average grades in seven out of ten areas — about as close to failing as a program could get.

The specific technical concerns pointed out by the reviewers in the yellow/red grades include ridiculously stupid issues, like document interfaces and physical clearances, that should have been resolved long before PDR. Examples are:

“- No formal process for control of models and analysis.
– Areas of known failure still need to be worked, including liftoff clearances.
– Process for producing and resolving issues between Level 2 and Level 3 interface requirement documents and interface control documents is unclear, including the roles and responsibilities of managers and integrators and the approval process for identifying the baseline and making changes to it.
– Numerous known disconnects and “TBDs” in the interface requirement documents, including an eight inch difference between the first stage and ground system and assumption of extended nozzle performance not incorporated in actual first and ground system designs.”

For several decades, Cooke has been a stalwart human space exploration architecture designer and line engineer on the STS and ISS program. But, and forgive my French, if this is the kind of crap that’s going to pass for technical excellence with the new ESMD AA in an Ares I PDR (or any other NASA technical review), then NASA needs yet another a new ESMD AA, and Cooke should go back to architecture studies. The program simply can’t afford for things to keep going the way they are.

Doug Cooke, like Mike Griffin, is likely a short timer. It’s pretty hard to get very wound up about his attempts to whitewash this disaster. I suspect that it will be over soon enough.

[Monday morning update]

From another comment, on Ares’ compliance with the Aldridge Commission recommendations:

I’d argue that the approach that is being taken with the Ares transportation system in particular doesn’t advance U.S. science, economic, or security interests, is not sustainable or affordable, does little to advance technologies, knowledge, and infrastructure, does little to promote international and commercial participation, and “builds in-house” rather than “acquiring” crew transportation to the ISS. In fact, the Ares approach not only doesn’t advance these areas, but it actually harms a lot of them, for example, by competing with them or absorbing funding from them.

But other than that, it’s great.

[Another Monday morning update]

Hilarious. Now Mark imagines that this post is “very heated.”

Mark seems to have a great deal of difficulty discerning actual emotions of others, or perhaps projects his own on them. For some bizarre reason, he often imagines that I am “angry” or full of “rage,” or “heated,” when I rarely, if ever display this, either personally, or on line. I think that some people are simply emotionally blind.

I can’t even parse this:

Now I can understand Rand being not angry at Doug Cooke, He treated the Internet Rocketeer Club with supreme contempt. But me? I wonder what the obsession is?

Can anyone figure out what he’s attempting to say here? I can’t. He can understand me being “not angry” at Doug Cooke? Well, that’s good, I guess, since I’m not angry at Doug Cooke. Or at Mark. But who is the (inappropriately capitalized) “He” who treated Mark’s imaginary friends with “supreme contempt”? Me? Doug Cooke? And is “He” also treating Mark with “supreme contempt”?

Well, if amused ridicule of his ungrammatical fantasies constitutes that, I guess I’ll have to plead guilty.

[Early afternoon update]

Clark Lindsey correctly points out that Doug Cooke is confused. It wasn’t Mark’s imaginary Internet Rocketeer Club that dissed his PDR — it was NASA employees who actually participated in it. Admittedly, some of us in the blogosphere pointed this out, but he’s shooting the messenger here.

Political Commentary, War Commentary

Remembering December 13th

30 Comments

It’s been five years since Saddam Hussein was pulled from his rat hole:

Saddam Hussein, his sons, and his supporters terrorized the people of Iraq and subjected them to violence and maltreatment without reason or restraint. His record of rape, torture, murder, and oppression is well documented but marginalized and deflected by critics who claim that the violence of the war overshadows Hussein’s heinous crimes. This argument does not, and cannot stand. During Saddam Hussein’s reign, Iraqis had no sense that the terror would ever end. The individual citizen had neither the right nor the ability to oppose Saddam’s henchmen, who took what they wanted, killed and raped at will, and tortured (think hooks, blowtorches, and electricity) to intimidate or eliminate potential enemies. The purpose of this evil was solely to maintain Saddam’s power and strengthen his regime by dominating the will of the people. He was held up as something more than human, above all laws and criticism and accountable to no one. Operation Desert Storm did little to give Iraqis lasting hope that Saddam would be defeated, and when he ruthlessly crushed the Shia and Kurds after the war without response from the West, they recognized it as another validation of Saddam’s invincibility.

When U.S. soldiers pulled Saddam Hussein from that hole in Tikrit, the spell that had held Iraqis captive for decades was broken. Suddenly, there was a glimmer of hope for a population who had never had the right to dream of a better life. That hope is what differentiates every day before December 13, 2003, from every day since. It is the hope that things will get better, that the individual life can mean something. That the next generation can live a better life than the current one, and that through effort and will the people can make tomorrow better than today. This hope is fundamental to meaningful human existence, but is often taken for granted by Americans who have never endured a life where its expression is denied by a cruel dictator. Some suggest that Saddam’s dictatorship, though cruel and oppressive, was the only way to effectively control the tribes, maintain order, and govern the country. Day by day the Iraqi people are proving them wrong; this is the legacy of December 13.

Abandoning the Iraqis to this monster (after encouraging them to rise against him) in 1990 will be seen by history as a major policy blunder. When you kick a can down the road, it sometimes turns into a grenade.

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!