I’ve shut down comments (I think) temporarily while I attempt an upgrade from MT-4.01 to MT-4.1, in the modest hope that it will straighten out some of the problems I’ve been having with timeouts. Hopefully not for long.
[A few minutes later]
OK, I’ve updated. Let’s see if we’re still having problems.
[Update a few minutes later]
Nope, still hanging up.
Looks like Romney is pulling out, with a speech at CPAC today. It’s probably looking pretty futile to him about now, and he probably doesn’t want to squander any more of the family fortune, at least this cycle. I think that the party is going to have to come to terms with the fact that McCain is the candidate, and at least be thankful that it is settled this early, while the Dems may go fighting all the way to Denver.
I also wonder if part of Romney’s thinking is that, if he gets out now, he can forestall a deal between McCain and Huckabee to put the latter on the ticket? If so, he is doing an immense favor to the Republican party and conservative movement. I would find it hard enough to vote for McCain. I’d find it impossible to vote for McCain-Huckabee. And I suspect that there are a lot of other people who would feel the same way. I think that McCain’s only real hope of shoring up the base at this point is to balance the ticket ideologically (and to make the appropriate conciliatory gestures at CPAC today). I think that a Fred Thompson in the number two spot would be very appealing to a lot of people, and he’d tear up whoever the Dems have as veep candidate in a debate.
[Update at 1:30 PM EST]
It’s official:
“This is not an easy decision for me. I hate to lose. My family, my friends and our supporters… many of you right here in this room… have given a great deal to get me where I have a shot at becoming President. If this were only about me, I would go on. But I entered this race because I love America, and because I love America, I feel I must now stand aside, for our party and for our country,” Romney said.
No word about preempting Huckabee but, then, there’s no reason to say anything about it. Let’s just hope that it happens.
Looks like Romney is pulling out, with a speech at CPAC today. It’s probably looking pretty futile to him about now, and he probably doesn’t want to squander any more of the family fortune, at least this cycle. I think that the party is going to have to come to terms with the fact that McCain is the candidate, and at least be thankful that it is settled this early, while the Dems may go fighting all the way to Denver.
I also wonder if part of Romney’s thinking is that, if he gets out now, he can forestall a deal between McCain and Huckabee to put the latter on the ticket? If so, he is doing an immense favor to the Republican party and conservative movement. I would find it hard enough to vote for McCain. I’d find it impossible to vote for McCain-Huckabee. And I suspect that there are a lot of other people who would feel the same way. I think that McCain’s only real hope of shoring up the base at this point is to balance the ticket ideologically (and to make the appropriate conciliatory gestures at CPAC today). I think that a Fred Thompson in the number two spot would be very appealing to a lot of people, and he’d tear up whoever the Dems have as veep candidate in a debate.
[Update at 1:30 PM EST]
It’s official:
“This is not an easy decision for me. I hate to lose. My family, my friends and our supporters… many of you right here in this room… have given a great deal to get me where I have a shot at becoming President. If this were only about me, I would go on. But I entered this race because I love America, and because I love America, I feel I must now stand aside, for our party and for our country,” Romney said.
No word about preempting Huckabee but, then, there’s no reason to say anything about it. Let’s just hope that it happens.
Looks like Romney is pulling out, with a speech at CPAC today. It’s probably looking pretty futile to him about now, and he probably doesn’t want to squander any more of the family fortune, at least this cycle. I think that the party is going to have to come to terms with the fact that McCain is the candidate, and at least be thankful that it is settled this early, while the Dems may go fighting all the way to Denver.
I also wonder if part of Romney’s thinking is that, if he gets out now, he can forestall a deal between McCain and Huckabee to put the latter on the ticket? If so, he is doing an immense favor to the Republican party and conservative movement. I would find it hard enough to vote for McCain. I’d find it impossible to vote for McCain-Huckabee. And I suspect that there are a lot of other people who would feel the same way. I think that McCain’s only real hope of shoring up the base at this point is to balance the ticket ideologically (and to make the appropriate conciliatory gestures at CPAC today). I think that a Fred Thompson in the number two spot would be very appealing to a lot of people, and he’d tear up whoever the Dems have as veep candidate in a debate.
[Update at 1:30 PM EST]
It’s official:
“This is not an easy decision for me. I hate to lose. My family, my friends and our supporters… many of you right here in this room… have given a great deal to get me where I have a shot at becoming President. If this were only about me, I would go on. But I entered this race because I love America, and because I love America, I feel I must now stand aside, for our party and for our country,” Romney said.
No word about preempting Huckabee but, then, there’s no reason to say anything about it. Let’s just hope that it happens.
When they made their announcement a couple weeks ago, I was interested to see that the interiors of the two fuselages of White Knight Two and SpaceShipTwo are identical. Virgin implied that they might be selling seats in WK2, either for passengers who just wanted a ride (with parabolas) or for future SS2 passengers. Which had me scratching my head. Had they considered the fact that WK2 is an airplane, not a spaceplane, and that it’s in a different regulatory regime?
The US Federal Aviation Administration has informed Flight that it will require WK2 to be certified before it is used for anything other than as a launch platform for SS2.
If it’s a launch platform, then it falls under the launch license process by FAA-AST, but if it is used for other purposes, such as crew training, it is in a different category, and has to be certified by FAA-AVR, the much larger part of the agency that deals with aviation.
I’ve long been on the war path to get people to use these terms properly, because they really do mean things.
Certifying an aircraft under (presumably) Part 121 (and perhaps even the more stringent Part 127) for commercial passenger transportation (think of it as the FAA equivalent of NASA’s elusive “man rating”) is a long and expensive process. It can increase the development cost of the vehicle by anywhere from one to two orders of magnitude. As an example, there was a small executive jet was prototyped by Scaled for a couple million a few years ago, but it was estimated that it would cost a couple hundred million to get it certified. Which is one of the reasons that you can’t buy one today. It never happened.
Now Virgin Atlantic Airlines is obviously familiar with FAA processes and procedures, and has an operators certificate. But they’ve never been involved with the development of an aircraft in the way that Virgin Galactic is now. My question is: does their business model account for estimated WK2 certification costs?
Which raises a second question. For this kind of market (informed passenger/adventure travel) is the current FAA certification regime overkill? This is the issue that prevented Zero G from going into operation much sooner–they had a certified aircraft (a Boeing 727) but it wasn’t certified for parabolic flight, and they had to spend years and a lot of money (I have no idea how much, but I imagine millions) to get a special type certification for this flight regime. So while we’ve made good progress in loosening the constraints for space flight, one wonders how much more progress we could have made (and how much less viable WK2 is from a business standpoint) because of our one-size-fits-all aviation regs?
It looks like, over a quarter of a century after Shuttle went into service, they’ve finally solved the ECO sensor problem. Now, of course, the problem is the weather. I’d bet they don’t fly today, just looking at the motion of that front. I wish it would come down here–we need the rain.
Lileks has some tart thoughts on those who believe that America sux:
You can picture the satisfied little grins on the authors’ faces; you can imagine the whole tableau–the computer (which most people in the world will never touch, let alone use, let alone own) the TV in the corner connected to a network that has channels catering to every taste, the iPod stocked with music hoovered up free of charge without consequence, the fridge stocked with food–the light comes on when you open the door, too, unless it’s burned out, and then you go to the store and get another one; they always have another one. The soft bed, the coffee machine, the well-fed pet, the vast panoply of free information and unfettered opinion flowing 24/7 from the internet. You can drink alcohol without being sentenced to death; you can be a girl alone in a room with a man without earning a public stoning; you can stand up in a room and argue for the candidate of your choice without being arrested; you stand in a society that allows for astonishing amounts of freedom, comfort and opportunity. But.
But. Someone somewhere is a practicing Baptist and someone somewhere else is eating a hamburger larger than you’d prefer, and other people are watching cars go around a track at high speed. As your skinny unhappy friend said the other night: people are just too fat and happy. He bites his nails and plays WoW six hours a night, but he has a point. It doesn’t matter that these fascists-in-fetal-form never quite seem to accomplish anything; it’s not like they drove the gay Teletubbies off the air or had Tony Kushner drawn and quartered in the public square. But they’re preventing something. Something wonderful. And they’re driving large cars to Wal-Mart and putting 18-roll packs of Charmin in the back and they have three kids. Earth has withstood a lot in its four billion years, but it cannot withstand them. And even if it does, who wants to live in a world where these people don’t care that they’re being mocked by small, underfunded theaters in honest, gritty neighborhoods? (Which are being gentrified by upwardly-mobile poseurs who have decided it’s a great place to live because the theater is good and the restaurants are cheap. F*#*$ing interlopers. But we’ll deal with them later.)
Hey, “Murkan Boob“? You’re probably too stupid to realize it, but he’s talking to you.
I’m tempted, actually, to institute a new comment policy. Anyone who leaves brainless comments anonymously using a “clever” (which is to say, stupid) nickname, off topic, will have posts deleted and the poster will be banned. I’m all for an interesting discussion, but these drive-by cowardly graffiti artists get very tiresome.
Willie Nelson comes out as a Truther.
John Kerry says that yesterday’s tornadoes were caused by global warming.
John Kerry says that yesterday’s tornadoes were caused by global warming.