Technology and Society, War Commentary

Maybe They Could Use Crayons

3 Comments

There’s been quite a bit of commentary about the technological backwardness of the enemy. That is certainly a key distinction between this war and World War II and the Cold war, in which we were at war with technologically advanced industrial states (Germany, Japan, the Soviet Union), whereas the hirabis have virtually no industrial or weapons-making capability, short of nail bombs. I think that it was Rich Lowry who compared the two cultures by writing something like “…we build skyscrapers and jet airliners–that’s our idea. They hijack our airliners and fly them into the skyscrapers–that’s their idea.”

Anyway, there was some buzz recently that they had developed a computer graphic of a nuked Washington DC for one of their propaganda videos.

Nope. They had to lift it from a western video game. They’re not only incapable of carrying out our destruction, they’re not even capable of simulating it. But it does speak strongly to their intent if they ever get their hands on advanced weaponry, something that, with advancing technology, will become more and more of a problem in the future.

Political Commentary, Space

Constellation Panel

4 Comments

Clark Lindsey doesn’t usually editorialize, but he does in this report:

Cooke:

– Powerpoint graphics showing Ares I/V, Orion, Altair

– Factors in selecting architecture include performance end-to-end, risk, development cost, life-cycle cost, schedule, lunar surface systems architecture.

– Implementation according to NASA institutional health and transition from Shuttle, competition in contracts, civil service contractor rules.

– Discusses the studies that justify the Constellation architecture that Griffin had decided on long before he came to NASA as director and long before the studies were done.

– Will get problems like thrust oscillation solved.

– NASA proposes to stay on course through a change in administrations. Surprise, surprise…

Emphasis mine. Are they actually openly admitting that Mike ignored all of the CE&R studies, and just did what he planned to do before he was administrator?

This was amusing:

The Coalition for Space Exploration shows a brand new NASA space exploration promotion video. Gawd. After the last panel I felt like killing myself. No problem. I can watch this video again and die of boredom…

He has some other pretty tart comments as well.

[Early afternoon update]

As Clark notes in comments, that reference to Griffin’s plans were his words, not Steve Cooke’s.

Political Commentary

One Final Word

82 Comments

Well, that was certainly interesting, if not very enlightening or uplifting, when it comes to on-line discussion.

I see that some blogs are continuing to mischaracterize my post as saying that Buchenwald was “not as bad” as Auschwitz. First, I didn’t say that. My point was never about whether one camp was “better” or “worse” than another. They obviously were all horrific, in different ways, and there’s no sensible or universal way to make such an assessment. As some commenters have pointed out, it’s perhaps better to be gassed immediately than worked to death (on the other hand, in Buchenwald, you had a much better chance of survival).

My point was, and remains, despite all the idiotic straw men (like the above) and insults, that Auschwitz was more notorious, to the point that it almost came to be an icon of the Holocaust. While Buchenwald was certainly one of the more well-known camps, I’d be willing to bet that many more people know the word Auschwitz and what it represents than they do Buchenwald. And among those people is, apparently, Barack Obama. Auschwitz is like Holocaust 101, which it would appear to be as far as Senator Obama ever got in his education on the subject.

Space

Personal Space Travel In Europe

Unfortunately, the ISDC in Washington this week coincides with the space tourism conference in Arcachon, France, and space bloggers like Clark Lindsey and Jeff Foust (who both live in the DC area) can’t cover both. But Rob Coppinger has a lot of posts from Arcachon, with some interesting concepts from European aerospace companies (though it’s unclear what the funding prospects are for them). Just keep scrolling.

[Update an hour or so later]

Clark Lindsey has some of the permalinks.

Business, Space

Virgin Tales

8 Comments

Jeff Foust has some reporting on Will Whitehorn’s talk at ISDC yesterday. In this post, he notes that White Knight 2 will roll out on July 28th, presumably in Mojave, and discusses other potential applications than just a first stage for SpaceShipTwo, including a satellite launcher. The lack of comment other than “we’ve learned some lessons” on the SS2 propulsion is interesting to me. It sounds like they’re still not sure what they’re going to do, which continues to put SS2 schedule (whatever it is) in jeopardy. I suspect that Sir Richard’s hype remains ahead of the actual program.

In this post Whitehorn mildly disses the Lynx:

XCOR is a company I respect, but with respect to them, they’re not building a spaceship. They’re building basically a high-altitude MiG equivalent. They’re building something that you can strap in and go up to 37 miles. You won’t get your astronaut wings but you will see the curvature of the earth. That will be an exciting project, but the problem is that it’s not a space project, and I think it’s been a little bit wrong to call it that.

While technically that’s true, it is a project that can easily evolve into a “space project,” which is what the program intent is. I don’t see this as a problem. In fact, I see it as a solution, because Virgin may have bitten off more than it could chew with SS2. In hindsight (and foresight for some of us) it might have been useful to develop more operational experience with a lower-performance vehicle before moving to a bigger one.

Really, the only thing lacking from the XCOR product is a lack of astronaut wings–it will certainly be a space experience, and a more personal one with a better view, sitting in the left seat. I think that the market for it will be bigger than Whitehorn claims to think.

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!