Space

“A Netscape Moment”

Leonard David has a good piece this morning on the prospects for commercial space.

There was actually a mini debate between Elon Musk and Alex Tai at their press conference at the Personal Spaceflight Symposium last month, in which Alex expressed skepticism as to whether New Space can be comparable to the Dotcom industry, in terms of the potential for huge returns and wealth generation. Elon thought that there would be some sort of significant funding event that would open the investor floodgates, as happened with IT, and Alex thought that this was a more conventional industry, with more conventional rates of return. But he also expressed hope that he’s wrong.

We may find out in the next couple years, given the list of potential events that could occur in that time frame that Leonard lays out.

Political Commentary

What I Think Of The Clintons

From a comment at this post about the JFK assassination, which has drifted far off topic because an anonymous moron came in and asked if I thought that Clinton was involved with it (for the record, as far as I know, JFK was killed by Lee Harvey Oswald, unassisted).

Rand, it was clear from even a quick google search that everything you said about Newsweek, Isakoff, and Drudge were true, and I’m not disputing them. What I couldn’t figure out, from admittedly just a quick search, was _why_ Newsweek “spiked” the story, I assume by “spiked” you mean “suppressed”.

I saw lots of sources that suggested that they did because they were still building the story.

The bigger more interesting picture: I’m just a vanilla Hillary-Supporter, and my support Hillary is probably only of interest to you in that I’m similar to the vast majority of voters who simply aren’t knowledgeable about this stuff. Maybe unlike most voters, I read the NYT every day, and lately I’ve been reading politico.com obsessively. But I never hear about this stuff. I respect your opinion (this blog isn’t in the rat’s nest), and when you have time and interest, I would like to hear more about a) the worst things you suspect eithor of the Clintons did and why, and b) why in the world the NYT and the Washington Post (and Tim Russert, Chris Matthews, etc), don’t cover the evidence for these deeds. No hurry, although I hope you write about it (or link to it) before I vote on Feb 5th.

That was suggested by many (lots of things were always suggested by many to deny the press bias in favor of the Clintons in the nineties), but my understanding is that Isikoff thought it was ready to go, and expected it to, and it was spiked at the last minute.

As to why they did it, the media was always reluctant to print negative things about the Clintons, and when they did, they always gave prominence to their spinmasters to minimize the damage. Don Hewitt claimed credit for saving Clinton’s candidacy with the Sixty-Minutes puff piece on the “problems with their marriage” after the Gennifer Flowers audio tapes surfaced. In one particularly shameful episode, when Gary Aldrich came out with a damaging book about them, and was scheduled to go on This Week, Stephanopolous (who ironically now, was working for the White House at the time) got them to cancel his appearance.

Continue reading What I Think Of The Clintons →

Technology and Society

An Interesting New Airplane

Does anyone know if this is for real, or vaporware?

There is no doubt a significant market for a supersonic business jet. The problem is, they still haven’t found a solution to the sonic boom problem. They’re finessing it with this airplane by (as the Concorde did) flying supersonic over water only, but enhancing performance by flying it just slightly below sonic velocity (almost transonic) over land, which gives them a faster trip than a conventional subsonic jet. But the advantage isn’t all that great, since they’re restricting it to Mach 1.5 (presumably because their fuel costs would go through the roof, and their range to almost nothing, if they went faster).

If you look at the comparisons of trip times, in some cases, it doesn’t make that much difference, and because they haven’t solved the wave drag problem, they still don’t have trans-Pacific range–they have to make a stop to refuel, so it only drops the trip time from fourteen to nine hours or so. Also, they only show a route from the east coast to Japan. If they wanted to fly from, say, LA to Down Under or Taipei, it’s not obvious to me where they’d stop for a refuel. Hawaii’s too far from Asia for their range, and Society Islands are too far from the US. It’s interesting, though, that they claim to have the same range at Mach 1.5 as as Mach 0.85. They really get killed in that transonic region, as expected.

A true supersonic bizjet (say, Mach 2.4, which is about as fast as you could go with aluminum), with adequate range to get across the Pacific, could do it in about five hours, which would be a huge revolution.

Still, there will be a market for this thing, I think, if their cost numbers are valid. They seem to be claiming that they’re comparable to a G550 on a per-mile basis (which also means on a passenger-mile basis for the eight-passenger configuration). I’d like to understand more about them, though. What are they calling “fixed” and “direct” costs?

While they drink a lot more Jet A than the Gulfstream, they claim to have lower fixed costs for supersonic flight. Is this because they spend less time to travel a mile, and get more miles per maintenance? That would explain why they have higher “fixed” costs and lower “direct” (mostly fuel, I assume) costs for the high subsonic mode.

I think they can make some money with this, but it’s not the real breakthrough we need.

Political Commentary

Venezuela Vote

Let’s hope there are a lot of traitors there:

Brandishing a little red book listing his desired 69 revisions to Venezuela’s charter, Chavez exhorted his backers to redouble their efforts toward a victorious “yes” vote in the Dec. 2 ballot.

“He who says he supports Chavez but votes ‘no’ is a traitor, a true traitor,” the president told an arena packed with red-clad supporters. “He’s against me, against the revolution and against the people.”

People here who support this budding despot, like Jimmy Carter, should be ashamed of themselves. But I think they have no shame.

[Update a few minutes later]

Here are some of the potential traitors standing in food lines, waiting for milk.

[Another update a couple minutes later]

I wonder if the leche lines are why he’s lost his lead?

…the survey was the latest blow to Chavez. He has suffered a series of defections over his plan, including an ex-defense minister who had restored him to power after a brief 2002 putsch but who called Chavez’s reforms a new “coup.”

“The debate over voting ‘yes’ or ‘no’ has burst into the very heart of Chavez’s support base,” Leon said in an interview. “We can see moderate Chavez backers ready to vote ‘no’ even though they like him.”

The question is, what will he do if he loses? Have the “traitors” shot?

Popular Culture

I Hadn’t Been Paying Much Attention To LSU

…but if Michigan doesn’t end up with Les Miles as its new coach, maybe it will be lucky:

Given the job description of a college football head coach, Les Miles qualifies as a good example for his colleagues across the country. The way Miles handled this past week of questions from an aroused media corps was exemplary. The personal integrity of the man who led LSU through the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina is considerable. Miles is a stand-up individual who does a great job of handling a lot of the duties of a head coach. From this big-picture perspective, the man is a good coach.

However, when championships are there to be won and statements are to be made, Arkansas ambush made one thing perfectly and overwhelmingly clear: Les Miles can’t strategize his way out of a paper bag.

He’s a fine human being, which should count for more in the long run than one’s performance when wearing a headset on the sideline. But for the record, this loss to Houston Nutt’s Hogs proved, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Les Miles is certifiably loony as a play caller, clock manager and timeout juggler. In those three aspects of coaching (not the job description as a whole), Miles is a flunkie. Period.

Lloyd Carr made a lot of questionable play calls over the years as well. The Wolverines ought to be looking to improve in that department, not get worse.

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