Space

Typical Media Space “Reporting”

Forbes has an article on NASA’s current problems.

NASA officials have taken days to decide whether the hole threatens the safety of the crew or if the astronauts need to get out to repair the damage.

I infer from the way this is written that the author thinks there’s something wrong with “taking days to decide” something affecting the potential loss of vehicle and crew. Did they expect, or want them to rush the decision? The decision doesn’t have to be made until it’s time to go home (or at least, until they are about to run out of time to do a repair, if necessary). It seems proper to me to gather as much information as possible, and not to do so in haste.

The U.S. space agency is already weathering a veritable meteor shower of problems, including allegations of corruption, underfunding, drunken and disturbed astronauts, and even murder.

Can anything be done to turn things around?

NASA spokesman Bob Jacobs says the solution is to emphasize the agency’s strong suit–science.

That’s the agency’s strong suit? I think that’s a dangerous position to take. It might make people question why NASA is spending so much money on things that aren’t science, and so little on their “strong suit.” I expect the public to think that space=science, but it’s disappointing to see a NASA spokesman promulgating the myth.

For a brief moment in 2004–less than a year after the shuttle Columbia disintegrated on its return to Earth–NASA enjoyed a swelling of support. President Bush announced his new program for space exploration. He vowed to complete the International Space Station by 2010, develop a new vehicle to replace the aging shuttle fleet and return to the moon by 2020. The ultimate goal, Bush said, would be a new frontier in space adventure–a human journey to Mars.

And beyond. “Mars and beyond.” The president said that humans are going out into the cosmos. Mars is just one more stepping stone along the way, not the “ultimate goal.” Why can’t they ever get it right?

The administration’s priorities have changed, for obvious reasons.

Really? In what way? And what for what “reasons,” that are supposed to be “obvious”? There has been no change in policy of which I’m aware. VSE was never a high priority, but it was, and remains, the national civil space policy.

But NASA’s recent bad luck has been largely self-inflicted.

For example, there’s the strange case of Lisa Nowak. In February she was arrested after driving more than 900 miles to attack and potentially kidnap a romantic rival in a love triangle involving another astronaut. Last month a NASA study on astronaut behavior and health revealed that some astronauts have been drunk prior to liftoff.

No, it revealed nothing of the kind. We still have no reason to believe that anyone ever took off in a Shuttle while inebriated. Another media myth that will not die.

Just about everyone agrees that the agency is overstretched. In his fiscal-year 2008 budget, President Bush requested $17.3 billion for NASA. A Senate appropriations subcommittee has allotted $150 million more than the president’s request, and the House committee also believes the agency is underfunded.

Vincent Sabathier, director of the Human Space Exploration Initiatives program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, says NASA needs another $3 billion per year to do its exploration and scientific work effectively.

“NASA is an amazing tool for the U.S.,” he says. The agency is “in trouble” because “we ask a lot from them, and we don’t give them enough money.” According to Sabathier, the agency needs another $3 billion per year to do its exploration and scientific work effectively.

“For one year of the cost of the war in Iraq,” he says, “we could have a permanent lunar base.”

This is always irritating.

Yes, or for a few months of the cost of social security. Or the amount we spend on vacations. Or interest on the federal debt. There are many potential sources of funding for a lunar base, if having a lunar base is important.

What’s the point? Obviously, this is a person who would object to spending money on Iraq regardless of what alternate use it could be put to, and thinks that others agree with him, so he uses that as an example of where to get the money for a lunar base, as though the problem is simply not enough money, rather than the national priority we assign to having a lunar base. If we chose to, if it were important, we could afford a war in Iraq and a lunar base. As it is, even if there were no war in Iraq, we’d be unlikely to take the funds from it and instead put them into NASA. More likely, it would be used to reduce the deficit. This is a flawed argument.

Speaking of flawed arguments in favor of (and against) space spending, Alan Boyle has a(n inadvertent) gallery of them in his comments section here. You’ll find almost every single one of them.

Political Commentary

Irony

Former prosecutor Nifong is whining that he’s being treated unfairly:

When former Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong mailed in his law license last week, he also included a note bemoaning “the fundamental unfairness” of the North Carolina State Bar’s handling of his ethics case.

Nifong was disbarred for his handling of rape charges against three Duke University men’s lacrosse players. State prosecutors later dismissed the charges and declared the players innocent.

I think we have a new dictionary example of chutzpah, to replace the old one about the guy who murdered his parents and threw himself on the mercy of the court because he was an orphan.

I have to say that I also like the part about how the dog ate his law license.

War Commentary

“The Story The World Doesn’t Want To Hear”

This isn’t news to the people who’ve been reading Michaels Yon and Totten, but the source of this story is what’s most surprising–Der Spiegel:

Ramadi is an irritating contradiction of almost everything the world thinks it knows about Iraq — it is proof that the US military is more successful than the world wants to believe. Ramadi demonstrates that large parts of Iraq — not just Anbar Province, but also many other rural areas along the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers — are essentially pacified today. This is news the world doesn’t hear: Ramadi, long a hotbed of unrest, a city that once formed the southwestern tip of the notorious “Sunni Triangle,” is now telling a different story, a story of Americans who came here as liberators, became hated occupiers and are now the protectors of Iraqi reconstruction.

Many of Herr Fitner’s journalistic brethren may not be very happy with him. It’s the wrong template. Doesn’t he know that we’re supposed to be losing?

It should also be noted that he’s no apologist for the administration. In fact, he repeats the same tired old myths and straw men:

But there is little talk of these developments outside of Iraq. The world continues to debate the Bush administration’s lies, which hang over the entire operation like a curse, concealing its successes. The lies are legend, and they continue to color the picture the world paints of Iraq.

No one can forget how the hawks twisted the truth to engineer reasons to go to war — the made-up stories of Saddam Hussein as a mastermind behind the Sept. 11 attacks and the trumped-up reports about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. President George W. Bush himself repeatedly told his people and the rest of world horrible fairy tales, painting the most glaring of disaster scenarios, talking ad nauseam about unmanned Iraqi drones that, in his imagination, posed a threat to the US.

Of course, the administration never claimed that Saddam was behind 911, and there is no evidence that anyone in the administration has ever “lied” about the war. If Bush lied, so did many Democrats who believed the same things. But perhaps a German doesn’t understand the meaning of the English word “lie.” Unfortunately, many on the left don’t seem to, either. In fact, it is often their first resort when confronted with facts that they find unpleasant. At least this reporter is willing to report accurately what he finds on the ground in Iraq.

War Commentary

“The Story The World Doesn’t Want To Hear”

This isn’t news to the people who’ve been reading Michaels Yon and Totten, but the source of this story is what’s most surprising–Der Spiegel:

Ramadi is an irritating contradiction of almost everything the world thinks it knows about Iraq — it is proof that the US military is more successful than the world wants to believe. Ramadi demonstrates that large parts of Iraq — not just Anbar Province, but also many other rural areas along the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers — are essentially pacified today. This is news the world doesn’t hear: Ramadi, long a hotbed of unrest, a city that once formed the southwestern tip of the notorious “Sunni Triangle,” is now telling a different story, a story of Americans who came here as liberators, became hated occupiers and are now the protectors of Iraqi reconstruction.

Many of Herr Fitner’s journalistic brethren may not be very happy with him. It’s the wrong template. Doesn’t he know that we’re supposed to be losing?

It should also be noted that he’s no apologist for the administration. In fact, he repeats the same tired old myths and straw men:

But there is little talk of these developments outside of Iraq. The world continues to debate the Bush administration’s lies, which hang over the entire operation like a curse, concealing its successes. The lies are legend, and they continue to color the picture the world paints of Iraq.

No one can forget how the hawks twisted the truth to engineer reasons to go to war — the made-up stories of Saddam Hussein as a mastermind behind the Sept. 11 attacks and the trumped-up reports about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. President George W. Bush himself repeatedly told his people and the rest of world horrible fairy tales, painting the most glaring of disaster scenarios, talking ad nauseam about unmanned Iraqi drones that, in his imagination, posed a threat to the US.

Of course, the administration never claimed that Saddam was behind 911, and there is no evidence that anyone in the administration has ever “lied” about the war. If Bush lied, so did many Democrats who believed the same things. But perhaps a German doesn’t understand the meaning of the English word “lie.” Unfortunately, many on the left don’t seem to, either. In fact, it is often their first resort when confronted with facts that they find unpleasant. At least this reporter is willing to report accurately what he finds on the ground in Iraq.

War Commentary

“The Story The World Doesn’t Want To Hear”

This isn’t news to the people who’ve been reading Michaels Yon and Totten, but the source of this story is what’s most surprising–Der Spiegel:

Ramadi is an irritating contradiction of almost everything the world thinks it knows about Iraq — it is proof that the US military is more successful than the world wants to believe. Ramadi demonstrates that large parts of Iraq — not just Anbar Province, but also many other rural areas along the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers — are essentially pacified today. This is news the world doesn’t hear: Ramadi, long a hotbed of unrest, a city that once formed the southwestern tip of the notorious “Sunni Triangle,” is now telling a different story, a story of Americans who came here as liberators, became hated occupiers and are now the protectors of Iraqi reconstruction.

Many of Herr Fitner’s journalistic brethren may not be very happy with him. It’s the wrong template. Doesn’t he know that we’re supposed to be losing?

It should also be noted that he’s no apologist for the administration. In fact, he repeats the same tired old myths and straw men:

But there is little talk of these developments outside of Iraq. The world continues to debate the Bush administration’s lies, which hang over the entire operation like a curse, concealing its successes. The lies are legend, and they continue to color the picture the world paints of Iraq.

No one can forget how the hawks twisted the truth to engineer reasons to go to war — the made-up stories of Saddam Hussein as a mastermind behind the Sept. 11 attacks and the trumped-up reports about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. President George W. Bush himself repeatedly told his people and the rest of world horrible fairy tales, painting the most glaring of disaster scenarios, talking ad nauseam about unmanned Iraqi drones that, in his imagination, posed a threat to the US.

Of course, the administration never claimed that Saddam was behind 911, and there is no evidence that anyone in the administration has ever “lied” about the war. If Bush lied, so did many Democrats who believed the same things. But perhaps a German doesn’t understand the meaning of the English word “lie.” Unfortunately, many on the left don’t seem to, either. In fact, it is often their first resort when confronted with facts that they find unpleasant. At least this reporter is willing to report accurately what he finds on the ground in Iraq.

Space

Progress

It’s taken far too long, and cost far more than it’s worth, but it’s definitely progress.

We used to have a concept back in the eighties at Rockwell called Extended-Duration Orbiter (EDO) in which we’d pack extra fuel cells in the payload bay to extend the mission length of a Shuttle flight, because electrical power (provided by fuel cells, which had finite propellants) was the initial tallest pole in the tent to allowing longer missions.

Now that the station finally has surplus power with the last installation of solar panels, it can provide some to the Shuttle to allow an extended stay there.

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!