Alan Boyle has a piece on what looks to be an interesting PBS series on biblical archaeology. I agree that it is not the archaeologist’s job to either prove, or disprove creation myths. His job is to, as best as can be done, utilize the scientific method to figure out what the past really was.
Failure To Tether
One of the astronauts lost a toolbag during EVA servicing:
Piper noticed that one of the two grease guns in her bag had exploded, spreading the dark, dry grease all over her camera and gloves. The grease, called Braycote, is a durable, non-flamable lubricant tough enough to handle the extreme temperatures and vacuum of space. It is needed to lubricate the cranky joint which has been grinding for more than a year.
In the midst of trying to clean up the mess, the bag of tools floated away from her. Views from a camera mounted on her helmet show it drifting slowly off towards the back of the station, some 200 miles above the earth.
“Oh, great,” she exclaimed in frustration.
I assume that by “exploded” they just mean “escaped under pressure,” and not literally a supersonic combustion.
A truly spacefaring nation would have a routine means of going and retrieving something like this. Instead, it becomes one more piece of space junk to track until it eventually enters the atmosphere, probably months or years from now.
Administrative Note
For the first time, I’ve started deleting some comments without comment (I should say, for the first time other than spam). They come in the form: “…blah blah Simberg blah blah sh*thead blah blah blah f**k you blah blah blah idiot blah blah blah…” They are also anonymous.
Just so the cowardly anonymous moron(s) know, and perhaps won’t waste their and my time on such mindless incivility in the future.
A Corrective
…to the charlatans like Jim Hansen. Here are two useful books. First, Cool It
Yup. As many reviewers note, “climate change” isn’t really about science–it’s just the latest ideology to come along for the collectivists to use in their latest attempt to bend us to their will.
More Religiophobia Thoughts
In response to my previous post on the subject, from Eric Scheie:
If we see the two anti-freedom strains as “your money or your sex,” it becomes quite obvious that it’s easier — a hell of a lot easier — for the government to grab your money than your genitalia.
Yet even though the anti-sex people are by no means a majority in the GOP and cannot possibly implement their schemes, more people fear the Republicans.
A great con job, if you ask me.
Yup. And it continues on.
What Would We Do Without Lou Friedman…
…to be the public’s representative for space exploration?
As Paul Spudis (who I recently discovered has a blog or two) notes in comments over there, it’s a deadly combination of insufferable arrogance and unsurpassed ignorance. Though I think he gives Lou too much credit when he calls it an accomplishment. It comes naturally to him.
One In Thirty?
Is that really the loss-of-crew probability for an ISS trip with Ares/Orion?
I could buy that number for a lunar mission, but if that’s just for a crew changeout, they seem to be managing to spend billions on a new launch vehicle that is less safe than Shuttle.
How could it be? As one of the commenters speculates over there, they may have pulled a lot of redundancy out to save weight when they ran out of margin on both the launcher and the capsule. Also, as I think I’ve mentioned before, it may be that they’ve figured out that the Launch Abort System actually adds more risk than it removes, given the dozens of hazards it introduces, over half of which can happen on an otherwise nominal mission.
Anyway, if true, it’s just one more reason to abort this monstrosity now, before it wastes any more time or money.
Advice From Across The Pond
Rob Coppinger has some suggestions to the Obama administration for NASA policy. I agree that Ares I should be mercy killed ASAP, but I disagree that we need an Ares anything else. We need to stop focusing on heavy lift and start developing the capability to store propellant on orbit, which will allow us to launch escape missions of arbitrarily large mass.
In The Deep End Of The Gene Pool
Kay Hymowitz writes about the chaos of Darwinist dating.
No Bail Out
Here’s a fellow Flintite (Flintian) explaining why her former employer shouldn’t be bailed out:
The strength of the union and the weakness of management made it impossible to conduct business properly at any level. For instance, I had an employee who punched in his time card and then disappeared. The rules were such that I had to spend hours documenting that this man was not in his three foot by three foot work area. I needed witnesses, timed reports, calls over the intercom and a plant wide search all documented in detail. After this absurdity I decided to go my own route; I called the corner bar and paged him and he came to the phone. I gave him a 30 day unpaid disciplinary lay off because he was a “repeat offender”. When he returned he thanked me for the PAID vacation. I scoffed, until he explained: (1) He had tried to get the lay off because it was fishing season; (2) The UAW negotiated with GM Labor Relations Department to give him the time WITH PAY.
I supervised a loading dock and 21 UAW workers who worked approximately five hours per day for eight hours pay. They could easily load one third more rail cars and still maintain their union negotiated break times, but when I tried to make them increase production ever so slightly they sabotaged my ability to make even the current production levels by hiding stock, calling in sick, feigning equipment problems, and even once, as a show of force, used a fork lift truck and pallets and racks to create a car part prison where they trapped me while I was conducting inventory. The reaction of upper management to my request to boost production was that I should “not be naïve”.
Another employee in the plant urinated on the feet of his supervisor as a protest to discipline. He was, of course, fired…that is until the union negotiated and got his job back.
Eventually I was promoted to a management position where I supervised salaried employees at HQ. As I left the plant I gave management a blunt message. I told them that I expected the union to act like the union, but I was disappointed that management didn’t act like management.
I saw a lot of this in the 1970s when I worked summer jobs in the shop, and my relatives who are still there tell me it goes on to this day. Of course, it’s hard to put all the blame on management, when the Wagner Act made it impossible for them to do much about it, because it allowed the UAW to credibly threaten their company with bankruptcy if they didn’t knuckle under. This crisis was caused by government, and bailing out the UAW will not solve it.
Also, Jim Manzi explains why we (the taxpayers) can’t just buy the three auto companies for their current market value (only seven billion) and save ourselves the many more billions that a bailout would cost. It’s kind of amazing that the stock has any value at all (GM’s in fact doesn’t). Equity in these companies currently has negative value because running them requires putting more cash into them, with no certainty, or even likelihood of return, at least with their current union contracts and cost structure. They are the proverbial white elephants.
This, by the way, is the reason that the notion of selling the Shuttle or the ISS to anyone else is a non-starter. No one could afford them, even if you gave them away.