Media Criticism, Space

Way To Go

8 Comments

Thanks for discouraging live blogging of space (and other) conferences (not to mention anything else), Keith.

[Saturday morning update]

The lesson here is that you have to be careful to delineate your editorial comments from the reportage (I usually do this with parenths, I think, though I’d have to go back and look at some from the past to be sure–I might use square brackets) when transcribing, because it is easily confused otherwise. But as I said, we shouldn’t let things like this discourage us from doing it. This is the first conference like this that I’ve missed in a while, and I really appreciate what Clark and others are doing. I’ve always wondered if what I was doing was worthwhile when I live blogged other conferences, and now I know that it definitely is. Well, at least when others do it…

Political Commentary, Space

China In Space

4 Comments

Glenn Reynolds has filed his first report from the ISDC, on the status of the Chinese space program. Or to be more accurate, the status of our knowledge of the Chinese space program.

I’m long on record as being concerned about the Chinese in space, when it comes to the military, and sanguine when it comes to them going to the moon. I remain that way. As Glenn notes, when it comes to manned space, they’re simply recapitulating what we did in the sixties, except much more slowly.

Political Commentary, Space, Space and Campaign 2008

The Candidates And Space

4 Comments

This sounds like an interesting session. I hope that Glenn is taking good notes. I’d expect Jeff Foust to post something on Space Politics as well (in addition to an article in The Space Review on Monday).

It may be the first time that representatives from all three campaigns have been on a single dais for this subject. We’ll see it they can pin the Obama guy down on how expects to fund education with the space program without throwing a wrench in the works with a delay (and how he addresses the dreaded “Gap”). And why he wants to wait until after the election to have a national dialogue on space.

I know Lori, but I’ve never heard of the other two.

[Update on Saturday at noon]

Here is Jeff Foust’s report, with more to come on Monday. As I would have guessed, the only people up on the issues were the moderator and Lori. I think that it says something about Obama and his campaign that he doesn’t have an adviser for this subject (or perhaps science and technology at all).

Popular Culture, Space

ISDC Eye Candy

12 Comments

Well, for guys, anyway.

OK, I recognize Michelle Murray (of FAA-AST) on the left, but who are the other two? Name tags are hidden. As Glenn notes, there are a lot more women (and attractive ones) at space conferences these days (compared to, say, the eighties). I think that has something to do with the excitement of the privatization activities, though the increase in the number of women engineers since then is probably a contributor as well. Not that there aren’t roles for other professions in opening up the frontier.

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.

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!