Pejman has a long endorsement of Fred Thompson. I agree with most of it. If I were a Republican, he’d get my vote.
[Update in the evening]
Matt Lewis says don’t write off Fred Thompson..
[Late night update]
OK, call me crazy [raucous chorus of Transterrestrial readers: “You’re crazy!”], but I think that this could be a winning campaign ad for Fred.
There’s apparently a military application for what I thought was an advertising technology:
It appears that some of the troops in Iraq are using “spoken” (as opposed to “screeching”) LRAD to mess with enemy fighters. Islamic terrorists tend to be superstitious and, of course, very religious. LRAD can put the “word of God” into their heads. If God, in the form of a voice that only you can hear, tells you to surrender, or run away, what are you gonna do?
What’s cool about this weapon is that it’s one that will be particularly effective with this enemy. If it happened to me, the voice of God isn’t the first theory that I would come up with, since I’m an unbeliever, but with these guys, it probably would be.
They are if lunar land prices are really a leading indicator. If so, I wonder why?
Michael Totten provides a critique of one of his “colleagues” in Fallujah.
Michael Totten provides a critique of one of his “colleagues” in Fallujah.
Michael Totten provides a critique of one of his “colleagues” in Fallujah.
I read about this on Arocket last week, but Masten now has it up on their blog. They lost their test vehicle last week.
This is not a setback. It’s a learning experience, and a demonstration of the virtues of cheap incremental testing.
[Afternoon update]
Dave Masten has a good point over at Arocket:
This morning I got a phone call from the landlords (Mojave Air and Space Port folks) asking about the “explosion, injuries, cats and dogs living together” and all other sorts of terrible calamities. OK, I exaggerate a bit, but I was specifically asked about an explosion. Seems Stu Witt is in D.C. visiting FAA/AST and he was asked about an explosion, so he called his staff here in Mojave and asked about it.
I would like to take this opportunity to point out that there is no physical law that says a launch vehicle must explode if something goes wrong. I know that if this were a Zenit, Delta, or STS there probably would be an explosion. But, we are not building that type of vehicle. In fact several of us on this list specifically design our vehicles and operations so that the risk of explosion is negligible. It is not difficult to do. Just starting with the assumption that safety margins are more important than payload margin takes one a very long way towards that goal. Add in a little thought about survivability of a vehicle takes one the rest of the way.
So, if I could beg a favor from those of you on this list who are with AST, please let your colleagues know that a crash of our vehicle does not imply an explosion or even a fireball.
Some thoughts on fear of religion.
Some thoughts on fear of religion.