Space

More Back To The Future

If this story is true, Orion is becoming even more Apollo-like:

Previously, the Orion was designed to land on large airbags at a landing range, although earlier hints that was no longer going to be the case came via documentation that showed a water landing – off the coast of Australia – for the Orion 3 unmanned test flight in September 2012. The first manned flight, Orion 4, was due to land at Edwards Air Force Base.

Also part of the mass saving design cycle – knocking off a total of 1,200 lbs from Orion – is the deletion of green propellants on the Crew Module, returning to the tried and tested hypergolic Reaction Control Systems (RCS). This weight savings measure was made in-line with the change to a water landing, due to salt water’s neutralizing of potential hypergolic fuel spills after splashdown.

This has many program implications. Water landing has an impact on the trade as to whether to expend or reuse the crew module. Previous trades assumed a land landing, and indicated that both life cycle and per-mission cost would be much lower for reuse, assuming a certain number of flights. But if they land in water, they may not have as much confidence in their ability to refurbish. If this means going to an expendable, they just increased the marginal flight costs quite a bit. And going to hypergolics continues to delay the day that we get propellants that are both clean, and (relatively) easy to manufacture off planet, such as methane and LOX. Of course, if they’re not going to refurbish, then at least they don’t have to worry about servicing a hypergolic system as part of turnaround, which has always been one of the ops-cost drivers for the Shuttle.

In addition, water landing means that they have to deal with a fixed-cost recovery fleet, for a low flight rate, because I don’t think they’re going to get free aircraft-carrier service, as they did in Apollo.

These are the same short-sighted types of decisions that killed the Shuttle program–pinching pennies up front with potential large increases in operational costs. And all because they chose to oversize the system, and wastespend their money building a new NASA-unique launcher that’s turning out to lack the performance they need.

[Update a couple minutes later]

I see that Chair Force Engineer and Clark Lindsey are also less than impressed.

[Update in the early afternoon]

Keith Cowing reports that PAO denies that a decision has been made. Make of that what you will…

War Commentary

“I Have Seen The Horror”

Michael Yon has a new venue to explain Iraq, both directly to the American people, and to the media and politicians who (either ignorantly or mendaciously, or perhaps both) continue to mislead them about it being simply a civil war:

When it comes to Iraq, being there matters because of the massive disconnect between what most Americans think they know about Iraq, and what is actually going on there.

The current controversy about the extent to which Al Qaeda is a threat to peace in Iraq is a case in point. Questions about which group calling itself an offshoot of Al Qaeda is really an offshoot of Al Qaeda is a distraction masquerading as a debate.

Al Qaeda is in Iraq, intentionally inflaming sectarian hostilities, deliberately pushing for full scale civil war. They do this by launching attacks against Shia, Sunni, Kurds and coalition forces. To ensure the attacks provoke counterattacks, they make them particularly gruesome…

…Clearly, not every terrorist in Iraq is Al Qaeda, but it is Al Qaeda that has been intentionally, openly, brazenly trying to stoke a civil war. As Al Qaeda is now being chased out of regions it once held without serious challenge, their tactics are tinged with desperation.

This may be the greatest miscalculation they’ve made in their otherwise sophisticated battle for the hearts and minds of locals, and it is one we must exploit.

Whether it was in 2002 is irrelevant. Iraq is the current front line in the war. Yon knows it. The administration knows it. Even Al Qaeda repeatedly admits it.

To abandon it now will be to give the enemy a great victory, and show bin Laden to be right, that when the going gets tough, America (and the West) abandons the field. It would demonstrate that their viciousness works in accomplishing their vile goals.

And it would be all the more tragic if it happened at a time in which we are actually winning on the ground, if not in the media.

War Commentary

“I Have Seen The Horror”

Michael Yon has a new venue to explain Iraq, both directly to the American people, and to the media and politicians who (either ignorantly or mendaciously, or perhaps both) continue to mislead them about it being simply a civil war:

When it comes to Iraq, being there matters because of the massive disconnect between what most Americans think they know about Iraq, and what is actually going on there.

The current controversy about the extent to which Al Qaeda is a threat to peace in Iraq is a case in point. Questions about which group calling itself an offshoot of Al Qaeda is really an offshoot of Al Qaeda is a distraction masquerading as a debate.

Al Qaeda is in Iraq, intentionally inflaming sectarian hostilities, deliberately pushing for full scale civil war. They do this by launching attacks against Shia, Sunni, Kurds and coalition forces. To ensure the attacks provoke counterattacks, they make them particularly gruesome…

…Clearly, not every terrorist in Iraq is Al Qaeda, but it is Al Qaeda that has been intentionally, openly, brazenly trying to stoke a civil war. As Al Qaeda is now being chased out of regions it once held without serious challenge, their tactics are tinged with desperation.

This may be the greatest miscalculation they’ve made in their otherwise sophisticated battle for the hearts and minds of locals, and it is one we must exploit.

Whether it was in 2002 is irrelevant. Iraq is the current front line in the war. Yon knows it. The administration knows it. Even Al Qaeda repeatedly admits it.

To abandon it now will be to give the enemy a great victory, and show bin Laden to be right, that when the going gets tough, America (and the West) abandons the field. It would demonstrate that their viciousness works in accomplishing their vile goals.

And it would be all the more tragic if it happened at a time in which we are actually winning on the ground, if not in the media.

War Commentary

“I Have Seen The Horror”

Michael Yon has a new venue to explain Iraq, both directly to the American people, and to the media and politicians who (either ignorantly or mendaciously, or perhaps both) continue to mislead them about it being simply a civil war:

When it comes to Iraq, being there matters because of the massive disconnect between what most Americans think they know about Iraq, and what is actually going on there.

The current controversy about the extent to which Al Qaeda is a threat to peace in Iraq is a case in point. Questions about which group calling itself an offshoot of Al Qaeda is really an offshoot of Al Qaeda is a distraction masquerading as a debate.

Al Qaeda is in Iraq, intentionally inflaming sectarian hostilities, deliberately pushing for full scale civil war. They do this by launching attacks against Shia, Sunni, Kurds and coalition forces. To ensure the attacks provoke counterattacks, they make them particularly gruesome…

…Clearly, not every terrorist in Iraq is Al Qaeda, but it is Al Qaeda that has been intentionally, openly, brazenly trying to stoke a civil war. As Al Qaeda is now being chased out of regions it once held without serious challenge, their tactics are tinged with desperation.

This may be the greatest miscalculation they’ve made in their otherwise sophisticated battle for the hearts and minds of locals, and it is one we must exploit.

Whether it was in 2002 is irrelevant. Iraq is the current front line in the war. Yon knows it. The administration knows it. Even Al Qaeda repeatedly admits it.

To abandon it now will be to give the enemy a great victory, and show bin Laden to be right, that when the going gets tough, America (and the West) abandons the field. It would demonstrate that their viciousness works in accomplishing their vile goals.

And it would be all the more tragic if it happened at a time in which we are actually winning on the ground, if not in the media.

War Commentary

Missing Alms

Mark Steyn on censorship by litigation:

…why would the Cambridge University Press, one of the most respected publishers on the planet, absolve Khalid bin Mahfouz, his family, his businesses and his charities to a degree that neither (to pluck at random) the U.S., French, Albanian, Swiss and Pakistani governments would be prepared to do?

Because English libel law overwhelmingly favors the plaintiff. And like many other big-shot Saudis, Sheikh Mahfouz has become very adept at using foreign courts to silence American authors

Political Commentary

Flawed Argument

In a long and ongoing discussion on (now proven) fabulist Private Beauchamp over at Winds of Change, the topic drifts to Rathergate.

However, one fake document which claimed things that were almost certainly true, was widely regarded to somehow prove they were false because that document itself was fake. Very twisted logic there.

I must have missed that. Maybe someone somewhere argued that this proved that Bush wasn’t AWOL, but I don’t recall ever seeing such an argument.

But then, I never had a strong opinion on whether or not Bush was AWOL (and still don’t). Furthermore, I never much cared, because Bush has always said that when he was young and stupid, he was young and stupid, and he (unlike John Kerry) wasn’t running on his youthful military record–he was running on his more-recent record as president.

Frankly, what was so funny to me about the thing was that the people who were pushing the “Bush is AWOL” story thought that it would damage him with his base, when in fact they were the only people who gave a rat’s patoot (and then only because of the political damage they thought it could do to their enemy, not because they have any intrinsic problems with soldiers going AWOL–many of them would probably laud that in general). It’s the same mentality that causes them to “out” gay Republicans.

What Rathergate proved to me was that some supposedly objective journalists were willing to fabricate, or overlook the fabrication of, documents to support their political agenda, just weeks before an election. It also proved to me that they were idiots. I think that there’s very sound logic behind that.

War Commentary

Robot Soldiers

…and the laws of war. Some interesting thoughts.

I’ve often discussed my frustration with those on the left who deludedly (or more likely, disingenuously) claim that we must treat enemy captured according to the Geneva Conventions (i.e., in their minds, as POWs, or even worse, as civil criminals) when in fact to do what they demand would be a clear violation in itself of the conventions, because the conventions require that we not privilege illegal combatants. And in this war, the enemy has no legal combatants, in terms of Geneva.

In an age of asymmetrical warfare, and entering a post-Westphalian era, the conventions seem no longer to work (except as a means for those who hate America, and particularly George Bush’s America, more than they fear radical Islam, to tie our hands). They need to be replaced with something else. This kind of technology may be one solution.

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!