Was Obama hoping that Biden’s past (and future) gaffes would overshadow and distract from his own?
The Heavy-Lift Fetish
I’ve discussed this many times before, but Al Fansome has a useful comment over at Space Politics (scroll way down–it’s in the forties):
Other than Bob Zubrin (e.g., the Mars Society), I don’t know of any space advocacy organizations who have made super-heavy-lift a priority. The only reason that super-heavy-lift is a priority now is because Mike Griffin came in and made a command decision. He already knew the answer — ESAS was a facade to justify the decision he had already made.
Let me try to give you a serious response to your question.
Have you thought about how all the truly GREAT engineering projects on this planet have been built?
Let me list a few obvious ones.
– The Pyramids
– The Great Wall
– The Empire State Building
– The Hoover Dam (or pick your favorite dam)
– The Eiffel Tower
– The Kremlin
– The U.S. Capitol Building
– The Statue of Liberty
– The Golden Gate BridgeThey all have at least ONE thing in common. The pieces of each & every one of these great engineering projects were transported to the final site in pieces, and then assembled on site.
Great engineering in enabled by low-cost transportation and the ability to assemble the technology on site.
We are KILLING ourselves by not taking the same approach to space.
Next — think about standard home construction.
1) There are estimated to be more than 100 million homes in America.
http://www.census.gov/prod/1/pop/p25-1129.pdf+Number+of+houses+in+United+States&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=2&gl=us
Of that number, the estimated number of mobile homes is ~9 million
http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/census_2000/001543.htmlIn other words, well over 90%, or over 90 million, of American “homes” (whether in single family dwelling, apartments, condos, etc.) are assembled by the same method that is used to assemble the great engineering projects. This choice is obviously driven by economics (nobody mandated this result.)
SUMMARY: The large majority of Western and Eastern civilization has been built using the approach of cheaply transporting the pieces of the construction project to the site, and then final assembly at that site.
So, why are we ignoring the dominant traditional approach that is used over the entire planet?
Why are we not assuming that the right way to build our space economy, and to develop the space frontier, is to develop & use reusable launch vehicles to transport things to space at very low costs, and then assemble the pieces on-site.
Mike Griffin gave a speech a couple years ago talking about constructing the great cathedrals in Europe. Well, those cathedrals were transported to the final site in millions of pieces, and then assembled.
We continue to treat space differently than earthly endeavors for contingent reasons of history, not rationality or technology. Thus we get the cargo-cult approach of ESAS, in which NASA attempts to replicate Apollo, except without either the associated urgency, or the budget.
[Update on Sunday afternoon]
Since some people seem to imagine that the oil rig is a useful analogy, let me expand on it. It actually is one, but not in a way advantageous to the heavy-lift fetishists.
Yes, it is assembled in port and then towed to its operational location. But this is in no way analogous to assembling on the ground and launching to orbit. This is because of the huge energy barrier between the two. It’s no big deal to tow something from one place in the ocean to another–that’s a very old technology, and an extensive transportation infrastructure exists with which to do so. Thus, it makes sense to assemble it essentially in the ocean, but near land, to take advantage of the local work force.
But note that what we don’t do with oil rigs is assemble them in Colorado, and then build a humungous custom truck (and associated reinforced roads, with clearances) to move it to the shore and put it in the water. But that’s essentially what people are proposing in saying that things should be fully assembled on earth, and then launched into space, on a giant rocket that flies just once in a while, at a very high cost (particularly after amortizing the development cost).
In space the oil rig scenario would be analogous to having an existing assembly facility in LEO (that had presumably been bootstrapped up), with a robust low-cost transportation infrastructure to get things to and from earth, and from point to point in space. The “oil rig” (or large telescope facility, or prop depot for use at L1) would be assembled there, and then a space tug would move it to its final destination.
This was in fact part of the original vision for the SSF in the eighties. The “dual truss” configuration was intended to act as an orbital assembly hangar. Unfortunately, we didn’t have the transportation infrastructure to support it. But the fact remains that what we need is not heavy lift, but affordable, reliable and frequent lift. Once we get the latter, it will become clear how to best utilize it to accomplish our goals.
Will Reynolds Get The Contract?
A woman Down Under has a novel approach to asteroid management: wrapping it in foil.
Pompously Hilarious
And to think that just a few days ago one of my trolls was trying to convince me that Chuck Hagel isn’t an idiot:
“Joe Biden is the right partner for Barack Obama. His many years of distinguished service to America, his seasoned judgment and his vast experience in foreign policy and national security will match up well with the unique challenges of the 21st Century. An Obama-Biden ticket is a very impressive and strong team. Biden’s selection is good news for Obama and America.”
I don’t understand why the guy even bothers to call himself a Republican.
[Late afternoon update]
Oy:
Maybe when I get to Denver I’ll find someone who’ll explain to me why Biden is an inspired choice. He doesn’t have gravitas. He has seniority. We’ve been waiting for him to mature for decades. Only Chuck Hagel (his chief competitor as Sunday morning gasbag) could make him look wise…
What Was He Thinking?
There are a lot of people Obama could have picked that would have helped him with the south and west. But gun control remains a big issue in those regions. Obama has a problem because he professes support for the Second Amendment, as long as it doesn’t actually nullify any gun laws. So you’d think he’d not have picked a running mate who gets an “F” from the NRA. This isn’t going to help him with the bitter gun clingers.
[Late afternoon update]
A golden oldie from the primaries: Biden disses a gun owner. Well, the guy was probably bitter anyway.
Persuasion
Iowahawk has an in-depth report on the Obama campaign’s new winning tactics.
I Wonder If They Considered This
What do you think of when you hear the phrase “Obama Joe Biden”? It could have a subliminal effect.
Anyway, I think that Jonah has the best take on the veep pick:
He says interesting things, from time to time. I think he makes a fair point here and there. He was correct, for example, that Congress needed to have a real debate over the war. I think he has some obvious verbal intelligence. But, again, what’s fascinating — and what might be distracting some folks from seeing his underlying-yet-occassional smarts — is that he lets his ego and vanity get in the way. The man loves his voice so much, you’d expect him to be following it around in a gray Buick, in defiance of restraining order, as it walks home from school. He seems to think his teeth are some kind of hypnotic punctuation marks which can momentarily disorient the listener and absolve him from any of Western civilization’s usual imperatives to stop talking. Listening to him speechify is like playing an intellectual game of whack-a-mole where every now and then the fuzzy head of a good point pops up from the tundra but before you can pin it down, he starts talking about how he went to the store and saw a squirrel on the way and it was brown which brings to mind Brown V. Board of Ed which most people don’t understand because [TEETH FLASH] he taught Brown in his law school course and [TEETH FLASH] Mr. Chairman I’m going to get right to it and besides these aren’t the droids you’re looking for…
This is going to be a very entertaining election. I think that they’re going to be a double-barrelled gaffe machine.
[Update a few minutes later]
All politicians have sizable egos, but this may be the most self-loving ticket ever. There’s an old saying, “He’ll die in his own arms” — that can apply to both of them. (I’ve thought of it in connection with McCain, too.) And Obama and Biden are two of the gassiest politicians in all the land — they are rhetorically impossible.
I suspect that after a couple non-stop months of the Joebama Show, not that many are going to look forward to four years of it.
And the McCain campaign was ready to go with the ad.
[Update at noon]
Hey we not only have a messiah, but a veep who’s a certified genius. Just ask him.
[Update half an hour later]
PJM has a link roundup of reax.
[Update in the afternoon]
Man, Limbaugh must think he died and went to heaven. I’ll bet he has a huge library of Biden audio gaffes, enough for fresh material every week from here to November.
Nurture, Not Nature
Wild dolphins learning to tail walk. It would be fascinating to finally break the code to their language, and find out just how much culture they have. We can’t replicate their sounds, but synthesizers should be able to.
Who?
I’ve never heard of Chet Edwards. And it strikes me that having a running mate with the last name “Edwards” is a little impolitic right now, given the current problems with the one named “John.”
At least he seems to have a lot more experience than Obama. But then, he’d have had trouble coming up with someone who doesn’t. More signs of an attempt to appear to be moving to the center, and perhaps pick up Texas and do better in the south (though that still seems unlikely).
[Update a couple minutes later]
Actually, in reading his bio, I’d think that this would be an unbeatable ticket if he was at the top, instead of veep. But he’s not, and it won’t be. All of this presumes, of course, that he actually is the pick. We’ll find out soon enough.
[Update in the afternoon]
There are a lot of reasons to think that this is just a head fake. He’s a very conservative Democrat, and it would probably push the nutroots over the edge to vote for Nader.
[Another one a couple minutes later]
More thoughts from Geraghty:
Sure, he’s very pro-choice, rated F by the NRA, and manages to hang on to a central Texas House district. And Pelosi recommended him. But the debate would consist almost entirely of the GOP vice-presidential candidate saying, “I agree with Chet’s old position, the one he had before he put his manhood in a blind trust and flip-flopped to agree with Obama’s liberal position.” Edwards would constantly be in the awkward position of defending positions he doesn’t agree with. Add that to the fact that 90+ percent of Americans know nothing about him, it’s a formula for disaster.
Let’s hope he does it.
More Thoughts On The Tether Permits
Paul Breed notes in comments that the decision to require permits or waivers for tethered testing didn’t originate with AST (though I never claimed it did), but with the FAA chief counsel’s office. To me, this is just one more argument for making the office independent of the FAA and report directly to the SecDot, as it did from its inception until the Clinton administration “streamlined” it into the FAA.