NASA just lost two hypersonic test vehicles on an untested sounding rocket, built by ATK, the same company that is slated to build the paint shaker first stage for the Ares I. It’s not clear whether it was destroyed by the range, or it if just blew up on its own.
Sigh…expendables, and particularly solid expendables. Gotta love the continuing notion of putting things into space on modified munitions.
Alan’s a great science and tech reporter, but I wish that he’d asked George Nield about this:
We have poured a pad for tethered hover testing at our new location, but there was a recent FAA re-interpretation of the law that absurdly states that testing under a tether, as we have been doing for over eight years, is now considered a suborbital launch, and requires a permit or waiver just as a free flight would. This is retarded and counterproductive in so many ways, and the entire industry is lashing back over it, but it is an issue we have to deal with in the next couple months.
Maybe I will.
If Tim Kaine is the Veep pick, this will be a particularly devastating ad.
Not that that’s a bad thing…
Who knew?
Only people unfamiliar with history, going back to the original Olympic games. Or football, for that matter…
I won’t claim to know Juliette Ochieng, but I had a wonderful dinner with her (and several others, but I sat next to) a couple years ago in LA’s Chinatown, and I’ve read many of her blog posts and opinion pieces. I’m neither religious, or conservative, and I’m sure that there are many issues on which we’d disagree, but if I had a choice between her and Barack Obama for president, I’d vote for her in a Chicago minute. And not just because I had dinner with her.
The black-on-black bigotry displayed in the link against a true African-American woman who criticizes the messiah is disappointing, but by no means surprising.
OK, this new (527, not McCain campaign) ad is going to leave a mark. There are still many voters who have never heard of Bil Ayers, and the coverup going on at UIC is just going to make it look worse.
Of course, the Obama camp also started another spork fight with the McCain campaign, and is getting hammered again.
Does a guy who made more than $4 million last year, just got back from vacation on a private beach in Hawaii and bought his own million-dollar mansion with the help of a convicted felon really want to get into a debate about houses? Does a guy who worries about the price of arugula and thinks regular people “cling” to guns and religion in the face of economic hardship really want to have a debate about who’s in touch with regular Americans?
The reality is that Barack Obama’s plans to raise taxes and opposition to producing more energy here at home as gas prices skyrocket show he’s completely out of touch with the concerns of average Americans.
The problem with their strategy, as is often the case, is that they project their own class envy on the voters (just as they project many of their other personal issues).
But by and large, Americans don’t envy the rich–they want to be rich. Let’s leave aside the amusing fact that by the new Democrat standard that white guys who marry rich women and end up with several houses are to be demonized as out of touch, that John Kerry shouldn’t have had a prayer of getting their nomination.
So-called progressives are envious of the wealthy in the classical sense–they not only want what others have, but they want the others not to have it. In fact, the latter is more important to them than the former, so they promote policies that equally distribute poverty, in effect if not intent.
But the American people don’t want to take John McCain’s houses from him. They just want more house of their own. It’s very hard for me to believe that the number of domiciles that John McCain has, or whether or not he knows how many, is going to be an issue on which the election will turn. And as already noted by the McCain campaign, Barack Obama isn’t the best messenger in that regard. Nor were John Edwards or John Kerry. I think they’d certainly prefer a guy who came by his houses honestly–by marrying them–to one who acquired his with the help of a convicted felon for favors still unknown.
But what I don’t really understand is the McCain strategy at this point. Less than a week before the convention, Senator Obama’s polls aren’t looking very good, but there’s real dynamite in some of the internals of them, in which one poll showed Hillary! ahead of McCain by several points. So who do they want to run against?
If they weaken him too much this week, the Donkeys may come to their senses and come up with another nominee next week. On the other hand, in doing so, they’d shred the party. Of course, the optimal situation is for Obama to come out the nominee, but one badly bloodied by a huge obstreperous floor fight, so maybe they’re betting that the Dems won’t be able to jettison their flawed messiah without even more damage to the party. So it’s in the Republican’s interest for them to finally nominate Obama, but in the weakest possible state, and the worse things look for him going into the convention, the more likely that there will be a movement to oust him. But they should hope that it’s not successful.
[Update a couple minutes later]
Here’s more on Senator Obama and Tony Rezko.
…and the Americans play monopoly. A disturbing and depressing essay from Spengler.
Is there an enlightened solution for Russia’s problems?
I hadn’t realized that it’s about the same age as NASA. I’d thought it went back further than that. For the occasions, Alan Boyle interviews the current head of the space side of the agency, George Nield.
Michael Totten reports from Tbilisi.
On Monday, I visited one of the schools transformed into refugee housing in the center of Tbilisi and spoke to four women–Lia, Nana, Diana, and Maya–who had fled with their children from a cluster of small villages just outside the city of Gori. “We left the cattle,” Lia said. “We left the house. We left everything and came on foot because to stay there was impossible.” Diana’s account: “They are burning the houses. From most of the houses they are taking everything. They are stealing everything, even such things as toothbrushes and toilets. They are taking the toilets. Imagine. They are taking broken refrigerators.” And Nana: “We are so heartbroken. I don’t know what to say or even think. Our whole lives we were working to save something, and one day we lost everything. Now I have to start everything from the very beginning.”
Maybe they exist, but I haven’t seen any eyewitness accounts of the supposed atrocities by the Georgians that Russia claims started this.
And be sure to hit his tip jar. It’s how he affords to do this reporting.
Lileks explains why I rarely go to Subway.
I’d won a free 6″ sub. This was timely, since I was planning to buy one for my wife. We finished our meal; I went back to the place where the Sandwich Artists labor in various degrees of surly disinterest, and presented the coupon. The Artist began to craft the meal out the chopped and processed carbclay arrayed before him – and that’s when the manager walked over.
“For future reference,” she said, “those are for the next visit.”
I pointed to the small print on the back of the ticket. “Actually, it says for your next order.”
“Well, it means visit. It’s how we keep track of them in the back.” She jerked a thumb towards the back of the store, where the Something wet and spiny sat in a crate, swallowing souls and dreams and crapping out rules and procedure.
If there are two things I don’t like, it’s someone who tells me that fine print doesn’t mean what it says, and alludes to some company process that makes things simpler not for me, or for the employees, but some theoretical person on whose behalf the system was set in place years ago by a team of consultants who have already moved on to rejiggering something else that worked perfectly fine. On the other hand, after years of dealing with restaurant employees who couldn’t give a fig about the job, it’s difficult to carp when you find someone who does – unless, of course, that person has decided to make a point about a free sandwich for future reference.
Also, a trip to the museum.