Space

An Interesting Theory

16 Comments

Is the ISS itself causing the Soyuz entry failures?

…the Soyuz used to fly long duration missions to the space station flawlessly for years. So what changed in the last two flights? Some bad parts out of the same lot?

A unique confluence of circumstances being investigated appears to be at fault. The space station has grown in size considerably since those first early long duration flights that the Soyuz so flawlessly serviced. It is a bit larger now with all the new modules the Emperor has sent aloft for our friends. As such it makes quite a target for training gangly military officers on ground based radars around the world. It has also become quite a source of electromagnetic energy itself, with all the radios and such from all the international partners blasting their messages back to the homelands.

Did you hear the recent news about cell phones in your pocket causing your little reproductive agents to slow down or become ineffective? The same thing may be at work when the cacophony of EMI on the space station envelops the Soyuz separation pyros and causes them to become inert.

If true, it raises some interesting issues. Is there something intrinsic in the Soyuz design, or pyro design, that causes this effect? Or is it a problem for pyros on any lifeboat that we put up there? Do they need to make it possible to change them out on orbit (if this capability isn’t already there), and keep them in a shielded box until they have to go home? Of course, this would slow things down in an emergency, if they had to get away immediately.

The problem of a space station lifeboat is a much tougher one than people realize (which is why I’ve always opposed it, at least if such a thing is defined as a device that gets you all the way to earth if there’s a problem on the station). You simply can’t trust hardware that has been sitting dormant for months in the space environment to work reliably when you need it to (at least not at our current level of experience with space operations).

This is also the reason that we couldn’t use an Orbiter for a lifeboat, even if we had enough of them that taking one out of the processing flow wouldn’t have a severe impact on turnaround times. We can’t know for sure if it can survive six months on orbit, even with power and support from the ISS, and have the reliability needed to safely come home.

That’s why I’ve always advocated a robust space transportation infrastructure that is always being exercised (e.g., multiple co-orbiting facilities with different purposes, and space tugs/crew modules for transit from one to the other). It provides redundancy, and reliability, and obviates the need to abandon a single space station to take people all the way back to earth in the event of a problem.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Popular Culture

The New Hollywood Blacklist

4 Comments

Here’s an interesting extended look at the secret lives of conservatives in tinsel town:

Zucker gave Farley the script and, concerned that Farley’s agent would advise him against accepting the role because of the film’s politics, told the actor not to show it to anyone. Farley, best known for his recurring role in a series of Hertz commercials, read the script and called back the next day to accept.

When he met Zucker and Sokoloff on the set as shooting on the film began, he told them that he, too, had long considered himself a conservative. “I couldn’t believe it,” says Sokoloff. “We were afraid that he would not want to be involved in something that was so directly taking on the left and that he would not want to play the Michael Moore character.”

Farley told me this story during a break in filming at the Daniel Webster Elementary School in Pasadena, last April, with Steve McEveety, the film’s producer, listening in.

“I thought that the minute we started talking about politics that would be the end,” Farley recalls. “There was this dance that we did–a dance familiar to conservative actors in Hollywood. Lots of actors have done it.”

“All three of you,” said McEveety.

“Yeah, all three of us.”

…On one of the days I was on set, McEveety had invited Vivendi Entertainment president Tom O’Malley to meet Zucker. Vivendi had just agreed to distribute the film and had promised wide release–news that had the cast and crew of An American Carol in particularly good spirits.

O’Malley and Zucker chatted about the fact that O’Malley is the nephew of Candid Camera’s Tom O’Malley and that they are both from the Midwest, among other things. Zucker thanked him for picking up the movie, which will be one of the first for Vivendi’s new distribution arm. O’Malley told Zucker that he was particularly interested in this film in part because he, too, leans right.

Such revelations are common occurrences at the periodic meetings of the secret society of Hollywood conservatives known as the “Friends of Abe.” The group, with no official membership list and no formal mission, has been meeting under the leadership of Gary Sinise (CSI New York, Forrest Gump) for four years. Zucker had spent a year working on a film with Christopher McDonald without learning anything about his politics. Shortly after the film wrapped, he ran into McDonald, best known as Shooter McGavin from Adam Sandler’s Happy Gilmore, at one of these informal meetings.

“It’s almost like people who are gay, show up at the baths and say, ‘Oh, I didn’t know you were gay!’ ” Zucker says…

Let’s hope that they can come out of the closet some day.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Thuggery

3 Comments

Here’s the full story of how Sarah Palin was forced out of the anti-Ahmadinejad rally:

Make no mistake that this was an Obama op and that it was Obama operatives directing the screenplay. Upon news of Palin’s invitation, it was assured that the event would garner a higher level of attention than it already commanded. And the images and footage of Palin speaking in protest (popular protest, it should be added) of Iran and the messianic Ahmadinejad upon the backdrop of the common perception of Obama’s weakness in foreign policy and national security simply could not stand. Furthermore, it would have provided endless campaign fodder with Palin shown standing against the world’s foremost state sponsor of international terrorism amid the audio-visual bites of Obama stating he would hold talks with Iran without preconditions. The effects would potentially be more than just stinging.

It had to be derailed at all costs. And the first step in the mission was to characterize it as a politicized event. Getting Clinton to step away from the invitation was easy enough – her own vanity played against her as noted above. Having her spokesmen give a ‘politicizing’ reason for withdrawing from the rally planted the seed. And the trap was laid expertly.

All that remained was Palin and the media hyper-focus on her. If she remained, the meme of a ‘politicization’ of an otherwise honorable event would be hung around her neck – and Malcolm Hoenlein’s – like an albatross. Yet she refused to rescind her acceptance as Hillary Clinton had.

Here’s where it gets a bit dirty. The Obama campaign could not publicly cajole her to stay away, yet they needed her away. Desperately. So the pressure was then applied to Malcolm Hoenlein and the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations.

Meryl Yourish is appropriately disgusted:

The thing that I hate the most about this? It won’t stop my liberal Jewish friends from voting Democrat in any way. It won’t even make them think twice about the tactics used by the Democrats. And it’s far, far worse than Soccer Dad wrote about the other day. CBS didn’t have the story about Jewish organizations having their tax-exempt status revoked for having Palin speak at the rally.

That’s not a political party pressuring groups to do something. That’s outright break-your-kneecap, Mafia-style blackmail threats.

In fact, those are precisely the kinds of tactics that the Jewish groups will be protesting on Monday. We just never expected them from the Democrats.

You should have. They’ve been doing it for decades. Many American Jews seem to have the same relationship with the Democrats as a woman with a wife beater that she keeps going back to.

And I wonder why the media lets them continue to promulgate the absurd notion that if Hillary! had attended by herself, it would have been non-partisan, but that if she shared the stage with Sarah, that would make it partisan.

Well, actually I don’t.

[Late morning update]

Speaking of thuggery, Iowahawk has the latest on the Obama voter outreach program.

Business, Economics, Political Commentary

“Welcome To History”

15 Comments

Jim Manzi has a good, albeit depressing, description of the financial crisis and its likely outcomes.

[Saturday morning update]

One bit in the piece that I found amusing (and a little depressing):

[They] Promulgated a temporary ban on naked shortselling for about 800 financial stocks (in related news, the new recommended medical practice when you discover that you have a fever is to smash the thermometer against the wall, since this makes the problem go away).

Yes, I don’t think this was necessary, and it will probably have bad consequences.

Political Commentary, Popular Culture

The Undefended City

8 Comments

This NRO thing seems to be becoming a regular thing for Bill Whittle. He has some thoughts on confidence in our own culture and nation in the face of those who think it unworthy of defense or preservation:

…most of what I learned about Vietnam I learned from men like Oliver Stone. This self-loathing narcissist has repeatedly tried to inculcate in me a sense of despair and outrage at my own government, my own culture, my own people and ultimately myself. He tried to convince me — and he is a skillfull man — that my own government murdered my own President for political gain. I am told daily in those darkened temples that rogue CIA elements run a puppet government, that the real threat to the nation comes from the generals that defend it, or from the businessmen that provide the prosperity we take for granted.

I sit with others in darkened rooms, watching films like Redacted, Stop-Loss, and In the Valley of Elah, and see our brave young soldiers depicted as murderers, rapists, broken psychotics or ignorant dupes -visions foisted upon me by bitter and isolated millionaires such as Brian de Palma and Paul Haggis and all the rest.

I’ve been told this story in some form or another, every day of every week of the past 30 years of my life. It wasn’t always so.

But it is certainly so today. And standing against all this hypnotic power — the power of the mythmakers in Hollywood, the power of the information peddlers in the media, the corrosive power of America-hating professors on every campus in America… against all that we find an old warrior — a paladin if ever there was one — an old, beat-up warhorse standing up in defense of his city one last time. And beside him: a wonder. A common person… just a regular mom who goes to work, does a difficult job with intelligence and energy and grace and every-day competence and then puts it away to go home and have dinner with the family.

Against all of that stand these two.

No wonder they must be destroyed. Because — Sarah Palin especially — presents a mortal threat to these people who have determined over cocktails who the next President should be and who now clearly mean to grind into metal shards the transaxle of their credibility in order to get the result they must have. Truly, they are before our eyes destroying the machine they have built in order to get their victory.

We’ll see.

Science And Society, Technology and Society

Getting Better

11 Comments

The latest installment of “Better All The Time” is up at The Speculist. It’s all pretty good (I found sensation in a bionic arm without sensors fascinating), but I liked this:

Hey, did you notice? The world didn’t end! We get so used to the world not ending that sometimes we take it for granted. But in honor of our not being sucked into a giant black hole or blasted back in time to when our entire universe was nothing but diffuse particles, the Times Online has compiled a list of 30 other time the world didn’t end.

If you like that sort of list, keep this in mind: those thirty days are just a tiny, tiny subset of the total number of days in which the world has not ended. In fact, we are (and I hope I don’t jinx it or anything by pointing this out) batting a perfect 1000 on that score.

Yeah, every day, they tell us the world won’t end, and it doesn’t until one day it does. Which sucks. And there’s no one around to say “I told you so.”

Political Commentary, Space, Space and Campaign 2008

“Could Have Been Better Documented”

4 Comments

The NASA OIG says that NASA hasn’t provided a good basis of estimate for its costs for its Constellation budget requests.

I’m sure that this is nothing new, given what a perennial mess the agency’s books are always in, with incompatible accounting systems, different and arcane ways of bookkeeping at different centers/directorates, etc.

But here’s what’s interesting to me. This story is about justifying the costs of building Ares/Orion et al so that they can get their requested budget from OMB and Congress. But that’s not the only reason that we need to have a good basis of estimate.

Ever since Mike Griffin came in, he, Steve Cook and others have told us that they (meaning Doug Stanley) did a trade study, comparing EELVs and other options to developing Ares in order to accomplish the Vision for Space Exploration. A key, in fact crucial element of any such trade would have to include…estimated costs.

We have been told over and over again that they did the trade, but as far as I know, we’ve never been provided with the actual study–only its “results.” We have no information on the basis of estimate, the assumptions that went into it, etc. If NASA can’t come up with them now that’s it’s an ongoing program, why should we trust the results of the earlier study that determined the direction of that program when it was much less mature, with its implications for many billions of dollars in the future, and the effectiveness in carrying out the national goals? Why haven’t we been allowed to see the numbers?

I think that the new resident of the White House, regardless of party, should set up an independent assessment of the situation, complete with a demand for the data.

Political Commentary, Social Commentary

Full-Blown PDS

19 Comments

Man, do these “women” (assuming they really are women–obviously, since the advent of Sarah Palin, apparently gender has become a lifestyle choice) have “issues”. This almost reads like something out of The Onion. These people are becoming parodies of themselves:

“When I see people crowing about her ‘acceptable’ speech last Wednesday … I literally want to vomit with rage,” a comment from Anibundel said.

“I am shocked by the depths of my hatred for this woman,” another commenter, CJWeimar, wrote.

“It is impossible for me not to read about her in the newspaper in the subway every morning on my way to work and not come into the office angry and wanting to kick things,” a commenter using the name ChampagneofBeers wrote. “My boxing class definitely helps.”

Even some prominent figures admitted to being overcome by anti-Palin feelings. “I am having Sarah Palin nightmares,” an acclaimed playwright and writer, Eve Ensler, wrote on the Huffington Post. She said she was disturbed by the chants about oil and gas drilling during Mrs. Palin’s speech to the Republican convention. “I think of rape. I think of destruction. I think of domination,” Ms. Ensler wrote.

And people (OK, well, not people, trolls) accuse me of “hating” Barack Obama.

I’m always amused by the stereotype of the “hateful,” “angry” white man. From where I sit, I see more, and a lot more hatred and rage on the left. I can understand, though. They thought that the Messiah would arise by universal acclamation, and now they’re having panic attacks that he might actually lose. Which also explains all the angry anonymous moron trolls that I get here.

[Update a couple minutes later]

Jeez…here’s a Sandra who really hates Sarah:

When Sandra warns Sarah Palin not to come into Manhattan lest she get gang-raped by some of Sandra’s big black brothers, she’s being provocative, combative, humorous, and yes, let’s allow, disgusting.

Yes, please. Let’s allow.

Somehow, I fail to see the humor in a woman being gang raped, but then, I’ve never been a big Bernhard fan.

Between Sandra Bernhard and Michael Moore, it makes one ashamed to be from the Flint area.

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!