Jon Goff has another installment in his excellent series of tutorials on future space transport concepts. The interesting thing, as he points out, is that one can see a clear development and technological maturation path to these types of affordable systems via operational suborbital vehicles, both horizontal and vertical.
Hooking Them Early
Behold, Space Camp Barbie. Maybe math isn’t as hard as she thought.
A Solution To The Ares 1 Problem
A tuned mass vibration damper:
Due to both the immense size of Taipei 101 and the fact that it sits just over 600ft from a major fault line, engineers had no choice but to install one of this size at a cost of $4m. Too heavy to be lifted by crane, the damper was assembled on site and hangs through four floors of the skyscraper. It can reduce the building’s movement by up to 40%.
And only 728 tons. Hey, the vehicle’s already overweight. What’s a little more?
Wonder How Many There Are?
I’ll bet that the Obama campaign does, too and worries about it. Hillary! supporters for John McCain:
I believe strongly that all of us should now unite for McCain because he needs all of badly…I am sure all of us won’t vote for Obama and then all of us want Hillary badly to return 2012…..
The only way to make sure that Hillary will be our President 2012 is to make sure that McCain will win 08….
You know that’s what Hillary! is thinking, regardless of the “Unity” speech.
[Afternoon update]
Here’s someone else who is bitter, though it’s not clear if he’s clinging to God and guns:
A senior Democrat who worked for Mr Clinton has revealed that he recently told friends Mr Obama could “kiss my ass” in return for his support.
A second source said that the former president has kept his distance because he still does not believe Mr Obama can win the election.
Whatever else you want to say about Bill Clinton, he’s not politically stupid. Though perhaps his judgment is slipping, based on the behavior in the campaign (which could in fact be a result of his heart surgeries). Either way, this isn’t going to help heal the rift.
Thanks, Florida!
Florida just bought 300 square miles of cane fields in the everglades to return them to wetlands. They paid $1.75 billion. That buys out US Sugar that was responsible for 10% of the US sugar lobby. In April, in response to one of Rand’s posts, I wrote that we needed to find a way to buy out big sugar. For 6 MT times $0.10 implicit subsidy/lb, that’s $1.2 billion/year. US Sugar’s share of that is $120 million per year. So $1.75B is a pretty good price for their concession.
Sweet deal, Rand! Thanks for taking one for the team as a Floridian to lower sugar prices nationwide.
Caulking Up The Leaks
I’ve noticed since upgrading to Firefox 3 that my browser (and general system) performance has been much better. An independent consultant claims that it’s now the most efficient browser on the market in regard to memory leaks, at least for Windows, and Safari has problems (though it’s not clear whether that’s just on Windows, or on Macs as well).
Has North Korea Been Defanged?
Wretchard says perhaps:
Time will tell whether the Six Party talks will succeed in denuclearizing the Korean peninsula or whether it will founder, as did the Agreed Framework before it, on some new difficulty. But two factors make the new agreement more robust than the 1994 agreement. First, the multilateral format means that any North Korean double-cross would alienate not only the United States, but South Korea, Japan, Russia and most importantly, Pyongyang’s patron China. North Korea has a lot more to lose by welshing on the Six Party Talks than it did on the Agreed Framework.
Secondly, because their fissile production line will effectively be dismantled — the Yongbon cooling will be demolished — North Korea’s remaining blackmail leverage consists of a mere handful of low-yield nuclear material. And with the United States positioned to watch Pakistan and Iran, the future of any clandestine program is in serious doubt.
Expect complaints from the Bush deranged in the peanut gallery, though.
The Better Part Of Valor
The Canadian Human WrongsRights Commission has dropped the charges against MacLeans and Mark Steyn.
In a sense, it’s too bad. They were probably starting to feel the political heat. Now they will be free to go on and continue to abuse the free-speech rights of less prominent people, rather than being reined in as they should be.
[Update a few minutes later]
Ah, no worries. They can move right on to the next heretic:
Earle says Canadians are too politically correct.
“They pissed me off so I said some rude things. Does that mean I should go to court because … they were based on some kind of minority or discrimination or something-something?”
The B.C. Human Rights Tribunal will decide whether Earle’s comments, which the complainant Lorna Pardy claims were “homophobic,” violated the Human Rights Code on the basis of her “sex and sexual orientation.”
Earle is now looking for a lawyer and he’s hoping his newfound fame might help pay his legal bills. He’s planning a comedy fundraiser for next month.
The complainants, of course, will have their legal bills paid by the province. Not that the lawyer will do him any good. It is foreordained that he will lose.
Obama’s Accomplishments
Jim Geraghty has some observations:
It’s easy to wonder whether the candidate who talks about “real change” and pledges a government that will “heal the sick” and “stop the oceans from rising” actually knows how to get big things done – or whether he had the patience. Obama would seem to have the skills and brains to be a legendary community organizer, or state legislator, or U.S. senator. But momentous accomplishments in each of those positions take time, and at each level, Obama hit a wall, and turned his attention to a position of greater power.
This election will be about form (and glamour) over substance.
Obama’s Accomplishments
Jim Geraghty has some observations:
It’s easy to wonder whether the candidate who talks about “real change” and pledges a government that will “heal the sick” and “stop the oceans from rising” actually knows how to get big things done – or whether he had the patience. Obama would seem to have the skills and brains to be a legendary community organizer, or state legislator, or U.S. senator. But momentous accomplishments in each of those positions take time, and at each level, Obama hit a wall, and turned his attention to a position of greater power.
This election will be about form (and glamour) over substance.