Political Commentary

A Point In His Favor

At least in my eyes. Fred Thompson doesn’t go to church regularly, and isn’t afraid to say so.

I’ve nothing against church goers in general, or even church-going politicians, but I’d much rather have one who doesn’t wear his religion on his sleeve. Particularly compared to hypocrites like Bill and Hillary Clinton, who primarily went as a photo op, Bible in hand, usually when trying to tamp down a scandal.

General

Snuck Up On Us

Well, it turned out that Humberto formed in the Gulf, instead of east of the Antilles. The tropical depression out there will probably become Ingrid in the next day or so. I don’t like the looks of the track. I’m not in the center of it, but it looks like it could go anywhere from the Florida straights to the Carolinas. Of course, it’s so far out that there’s no way to know–it could also end up heading north and out to sea. I just hope that we know better by Saturday, when we’ll have to decide whether or not to shutter before I go out of town.

Space

Confusion

Mark Whittington doesn’t seem to understand the differences between SpaceX and RpK:

Charles Lurio has an interesting explanation why Rocket Plane/Kistler couldn’t raise funding for its COTS space craft and is now in great jeopardy of imploding. it’s [sic] all NASA’s fault. Of course that doesn’t explain why Elon Musk’s SpaceX seems to have no trouble raising private capital for the very same COTS competition that RP/Kistler seems to have failed at.

Well, actually, it does. SpaceX has no trouble raising private capital because a) it needs a lot less money and b) it has an angel investor, named Elon Musk. SpaceX has not been raising outside investment to date, whereas RpK has to. In addition, SpaceX anticipates other markets than COTS (and would be continuing to move forward in its absence, just as it was before COTS occurred), whereas it’s not clear if RpK (at least the “K” part of it) has a business plan that closes without it. So, yes, obviously, if NASA appears to be potentially fickle about whether or not it will eventually purchase COTS services at all (which it has), let alone from RpK, it will scare off needed institutional investors.

The real concern, though, as Charles pointed out, is that this can have a wider negative effect on space investment in general, even though there may be no logical relationship between the RpK deal and others.

And this is more of his typical nonsense:

Nothing is quite to irksome [sic] than to see people who pretend to be big boosters of commercial space who expect NASA or the government in general to guarantee the success of each and every commercial space company.

As usual, he does not (because he cannot) provide an actual quote or citation to support the assertion that there is anyone who has any such expectation. Because the only kind of arguments that he’s capable of knocking down are ones that no one actually makes.

Political Commentary

What Is Old Is New Again

Hillary has Sandy Berger as one of her policy advisers. I’m less disturbed by this than the fact that so many won’t find it disturbing. Will he play a role in another Clinton administration? If so, is this payoff for covering up whatever he covered up for them?

[Update mid morning]

Captain Ed has more information about where Hsu got his money. She hasn’t even been elected yet, and we already have a huge scandal. I feel like I’ve gone back to the nineties in a time machine. Except I think that, this time, the scandals will get a lot more, and better coverage.

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!